The first residence of Jake and Elsie Caraway

On 13 Jul 2023, I was doing family history research on Jake Caraway’s life timeline. I was tracking where he lived and when, as well as where he worked and when. I found the home address in Oakland of where Jake and Elsie first lived when they got married (and where they brought home their first child, Ann). The address was 2240 Hopkins Street in Oakland.

In doing some online sleuthing, I happened to find an old photo from 1940 on the Oakland Public Library online archive and the caption showed that Hopkins Street later became MacArthur Boulevard.

I then searched Google Earth to find what the current address looks like and found that an historic apartment building still stands there. 

Then I went back to the 1940 photo and discovered that the very apartment building is in the old photo! So the photo shows EXACTLY what the neighborhood looked like when Jake and Elsie lived there!

Another fun discovery...When I looked closely at the texture of the building, the vent grates, and the banding along the bottom of the building, it realized it was the background in the photos we have of Jake holding Ann when she was a baby as well as the ones of the two of them when Ann was a toddler. It's fun tidbits like these that make family history research come alive for me.