This week’s theme is “favorite photo” and is a follow-up piece to last week’s post about former Idaho Governor/Idaho Senator/U.S. Senator Frank GOODING and his wife (my 1st cousin 4 times removed) Amanda THOMAS GOODING. As I said last week, my favorite find is whatever discovery I’ve most recently made. Likewise, my favorite photo is likely to be whatever photo I’ve most recently discovered. This past week while trying to make progress on my paternal 4th great grandmother’s line, I discovered that one of her granddaughters was married to former Idaho Governor/Idaho Senator/U.S. Senator Frank R. GOODING. In searching for information about Amanda and Frank I discovered that while photos of him were easily found, there were absolutely NO photos of Amanda online. Not in a Google search, not on FamilySearch, not on Ancestry.com, not on newspapers.com, etc.

Not one to give up quite that easily, I decided there had to be a photo of her out there somewhere given her status as a governor/senator’s wife and the number of years Frank was in public service. So I decided to contact the archivist at Idaho State Archives and ask if they had any photos of Amanda. I had the pleasure of speaking with archivist Erin Bostwick and she found 2 photos of Amanda for me. I ordered the photos from the archives and they came last Friday. They are absolutely gorgeous photos and I have the great honor of being the one to put them out into the great wide web-world.

Allow me to introduce my 1st cousin 4 times removed, Amanda Jane THOMAS GOODING.

If you are a GOODING family member, I’d love to hear from you. In fact, if one of her family members would like to guest write a blog post about Amanda I invite you to contact me to work that out. You can write it yourself or you can tell me about her and I can write it for you. You’ll be credited on the blog either way. I would be interested in knowing more about Amanda.

I hope you all have a great week and I’m wishing you the best of luck in your ancestral searches this week.

Until next time,

Lisa @ Days of Our Lives blog