There is quite a story behind this picture. This was my great-grandmother's cousin. The picture was taken in 1896 in New Orleans, when Amy was not yet 3 (her exact age and name are on the back). It was taken in a photographer's studio near the old French Opera House.

Anyway, she died about 2 years later along with her grandmother (my great x 3 grandmother) and her mother on the shipwreck La Bourgogne. They were going to get my great-grandmother from Switzerland, where she was staying with her other, Swiss grandmother and bring her back to New Orleans.

After the deaths of her New Orleans grandmother, a cousin, and an aunt, my great x 2s were afraid to bring my great-grandmother home, so she spent most of her childhood in Switzerland. She, and later her daughter-in-law (my grandmother) saved this picture of her lost cousin. The Aldige family tomb in Metairie Lawn has a statue of two angels weeping on a sinking ship on it and has the inscription "In memory of mother, sister, and niece lost at sea on the steamship La Bourgogne July 4, 1898." View full size.