06/01/2026
Long Island’s Forgotten Past: The Mystery Solved
THE SUITCASE • ENTRY 01 June 2026
When I began sharing photographs from what I called The Suitcase, I believed I was documenting an unknown Long Island family whose identities had been lost to time.
Today, that mystery took an unexpected turn.
After seeing the photographs, my mother recognized many of the faces.
The people in these images are not strangers at all.
They are my family.
The negatives were passed down to me by my grandfather, a Yarrington, whose mother’s side of the family were the Vertles. What began as a historical preservation project has suddenly become something much more personal.
The older woman who appears throughout many of these photographs was my great-great-grandmother, a woman born in the 1800s whose image now survives more than a century later through these fragile negatives.
The young man who built the handmade airplane labeled Spirit of Long Island was my grandfather’s Uncle Jack.
The children, mothers, fathers, grandparents, beachgoers, gardeners, and farmers captured throughout this collection are not simply pieces of Long Island history. They are direct branches of my own family tree.
These photographs appear to span the late 1910s through the 1930s, preserving everyday life during a period of enormous change. Some images show family gatherings and beach outings. Others capture homes, gardens, automobiles, aviation enthusiasm, and what may be a World War I-era soldier posing proudly with a young woman.
For days, I have been sharing these photographs as an unknown story from Long Island’s past.
Today, I learned that the story is my own.
And somehow, that makes this suitcase even more remarkable.
Every negative preserves a moment that would have otherwise been forgotten. Every face represents a life once lived. Every image is a reminder that history is not only found in museums and archives. Sometimes it is sitting quietly in a suitcase waiting for someone in the next generation to open it.
The mystery may be solved, but the journey is only beginning.
Live a Second Life Through the Eyes of the Past.
