When I first saw the nine photos Hine took at the Eclipse Mill (including a few of Joseph), I was just starting my research project, and I was still learning the tricks of the trade. I was unfamiliar with the Soundex feature of the US Census, so when I looked for Joseph Crapo, I limited my search to the exact spelling. No one by that name turned up.

I have written two books about the history of North Adams, which is just an hour from my home. So I know the area well and have easy access to an array of historical documents. The North Adams Public Library has a complete collection of city directories going back more than 100 years, so I tried there. In 1917, a Joe Crapo was listed as living at 28 Bank Street, and working at Arnold Print Works, a huge textile mill that was located downtown, and is now the home of the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art. But starting the next year, he disappeared from the directories. On a hunch, I went to the city clerk's office to see if I could find a death record and was shocked to discover that he died on February 20, 1918.

I returned to the library and found his obituary in the microfilm archives of the North Adams Transcript. The obit included the names of his widow and three surviving daughters. A considerable portion of it recounted his accomplishments as a well-known New England professional baseball player. He died of complications following surgery. The article image was of poor quality and very hard to read, but his age at death appeared to be 22, which meant that he would have been about 15 when Hine took the picture, not 13. Thus began a long search for living descendants, and ultimately one of the great wild goose chases of the Lewis Hine Project.

After finding his wife's death record and obituary (1952), I was on the trail, and eventually tracked down the son of one of Joe's daughters. By that time, I had collected a fair amount of family history about the Crapos, and offered to send copies to him. He was thrilled, since he knew very little about his ancestors. A week after I mailed it, I called him, and was stunned to learn that I had the wrong family, and the wrong Joe Crapo. He told me that his grandfather was born in 1886, and that he was 32 when he died, not 22. He said, "Sorry about the disappointing news, but thanks so much for putting together some of my family history. Good luck with your search."