OLD PHOTOS FIND HOME IN MICHIGAN

Diane Runnels remembers climbing over boxes of stuff piled in an old garage behind her friend's home in search of two old photographs.

That was two years ago. Runnels' friend, Gwyn Mincher, had purchased the old house and garage at 1436 Luce.

As Mincher started cleaning out items left in the garage, she spotted the two photographs hanging on a wall and wondered about the people pictured. She called on Runnels, a genealogist, to take a look.

The portraits, one of a man and another of a woman, probably were taken in the late 1880s. Runnels turned the photographs over. On the back of each was a pedigree chart showing the lineage of the people pictured.

"It was amazing," said Runnels. "I'd have given my eye teeth to have found pictures like this from my family."

The pictures, mounted in heavy oak frames, were in excellent condition. "I knew we had to try to find the family," Runnels said. "They would want these pictures."

The family names were Brandon and Rhodes.

She talked with her friend and fellow genealogist Dawn Detring -- both members of the Cape Girardeau County Genealogical Society --and started a two-year search for a relative of the photographed people.

"I knew some Rhodes," Runnels said. "But they weren't the right Rhodes."

Detring tried advertising in a genealogical magazine but hit a stone wall. She turned to the Internet, as do many genealogists to research and meet other genealogists.

Last week she got a bite.

Farris Womack of Ann Arbor, Mich., sent Detring an e-mail message. His wife, Ann, descended from the Brandon family and was interested in learning more about her ancestor.

"I asked, `Would you cherish these photos?'" Detring said. "I knew they would." She shipped the photographs to Michigan.

Within days she got a call from the Womacks. "They had tears and goose bumps at the same time," Detring said.

"We were just overwhelmed. We still get cold chills," said Ann Womack in a telephone interview. "Farris, my husband, is a genealogist. He's been working on genealogy for 12 years. He's done his relatives and mine."

The woman in the photograph was Martha Jane Brandon Rhodes, Ann Womack's great-aunt. The man was William Rhodes.

The woman in the photograph was the oldest daughter of the Brandon family. Her mother died soon after childbirth and her father remarried, but Martha's line of the family had been lost. The Womacks had been trying to find it for years.

It proves that old papers or photographs in basements, attics and garages may not be junk. "Those things may be historical treasures to someone," Detring said.

The local genealogical society accepts historic papers, diaries, family Bibles and other items in danger of being thrown away. "We will keep them," Detring said. "We consider this our treasure.

"I can imagine how I would feel if someone sent something like this to me," Detring said. "That's why we do it."

"Some person down the road may help me," Runnels said. "I was able to do this to help someone else."

The Womacks plan a trip to Cape Girardeau to meet Runnels and Detring and to do more research.

In the meantime, the local genealogists are continuing their work to learn more about the two people in the portraits. And the photographs will be getting special treatment in Michigan.

"They are going to get a prominent place in my home, I guarantee," Womack said.