This mystery involved identifying a couple in an old photo from the early 1900’s rather than my typical quest of returning a photo to family.
The photo is owned by Janice Sutton of Mountain View, Arkansas. She found it in a collection of photos her mother, Jennie Lou Watts Hinkle, had passed on to her. The caption on the back which Janice believed was added in later years was “Mr. and Mrs. Nipper, (John?)” Janice was curious to know who the Nippers were.
Janice told me that her mother’s people came from neighboring Izard County. Since the person who captioned the photo was not sure of the first name of either party, I began with Findagrave.com and searched broadly with only the last name Nipper and the location as Arkansas. As I scanned through the list of hits…bingo! There were profiles for Charles J. Nipper and Jennie Lou Nipper, both buried at Combs Cemetery in Izard County, Arkansas. They were more than likely the two pictured in the old photo.
More research through U.S. censuses revealed that John and Jennie Lou Nipper were neighbors to Janice’s great grandparents, Robert Jackson and Tersie (Heasley) Cooper. This means that Janice’s grandmother, Magnolia Cooper Watts, grew up next door to the Nippers. From the photo identification and their proximity as neighbors, Janice and I surmise that her mother, Jennie Lou Watts, was most likely named after Jennie Lou Nipper.