A copy of an old black and white photograph popped up in my mailbox at the Mail Tribune earlier this month.

Sent by a friend who volunteers at both the Talent Historical Society and the Southern Oregon Historical Society, it was a 1910 photograph of the then-two-room Ruch School. The students looked like they could have stepped out of the Little House on the Prairie books.

Indeed, among the 39 urchins pictured was a student named Laura, fourth from the left on the porch.

But her surname wasn't Ingalls. Her name was Laura Fattig, my dad's older sister. She was 16.

I recall as a youngster viewing Aunt Laura as a kindly old lady with a dignified sadness about her. She told interesting stories of yesteryear which invariably began with, "Years and years ago ..."

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Despite those tales, there are a lot of gaps in my knowledge about my paternal ancestors' history.

It was time to pay a visit to the sleuths at 95 Houston Road in Phoenix. That would be the genial volunteers at the nonprofit Rogue Valley Genealogical Society.

The ancestry detectives work out of a nearly 2,000-square-foot building that houses more than 14,000 volumes, making it the largest genealogical collection between Portland and Sacramento.

Open Monday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., the library also offers information at www.rvgslibrary.org on the Web. Annual membership costs $25 but non-members can use the library for $3 a day. Jackson County residents aren't charged for their first visit.

"Most of the people who come here are not researching about Jackson County," explains spokeswoman Marie Fulbright. "This library covers every state in the union."

Fulbright, who retired from the fashion industry, says her interest in genealogy is rooted in her childhood.

"When I was a child growing up in Southern California, every summer for three months with my siblings I came up to Ashland to stay on my grandparents' farm," she says. "My great-grandmother lived with my grandparents. She had these wonderful stories about coming to Oregon."

One tale was about family ancestor Capt. Hoxie from Massachusetts who sailed into San Francisco Bay in 1849 shortly after gold was discovered in California.

"The whole crew deserted for the gold fields," Fulbright says. "So he sold the ship and cargo."

Hoxie, his two sons and a nephew headed north, arriving in the Rogue Valley in 1852 where Hoxie filed a donation land claim, she notes.

Mysteries periodically pop up at the genealogical library, says volunteer Chuck Eccleston, a retired civil engineer.

Consider the family Bible a society member had picked up at a used book store or yard sale a few years ago.

"They brought it in to us, hoping we could trace it back to the family," Eccleston recalls. "It went through about three different volunteers doing research. No one could find anything.

"But we discovered from the census that the family had been in the Salem area," he adds. "We sent an e-mail to the genealogy society up there."

Turned out one of the members of the Salem society board was a descendant of the family, he says.

Mystery solved.

I was curious what they could dig up about my Aunt Laura and family in the hour I was there. Perhaps there would be a mystery leading to a lost inheritance.

A computer scan by Fulbright of the 1900 census showed that Jonas Fattig and three children — Charles, Alfred and Laura — were in Nebraska. Curiously, there was no mention of wife, Viola, and their youngest daughter, Bessie Belle.

Family lore has it that Jonas had come to Southern Oregon in the late 1800s, then returned to the Midwest for his family. They lived in Ashland, then moved to a farm in the Applegate Valley near Ruch.

Sure enough, the 1920 census revealed Jonas and Viola were living on the Applegate farm along with son, Paul, age 13. The latter was my father, born in Ashland in 1906.

Volunteer Cheryl Haas discovered a death certificate for Bessie Belle, who died at age 6 on June 10, 1904, in the Fattig home on Wimer Street in Ashland. Cause of death was high fever brought by pneumonia following a bout with measles, wrote the doctor who had attended her for eight days.

One volunteer found a Dec. 23, 1911, marriage certificate for Laura Fattig and John Anderson in Medford. Since she was only 17, her mother had to give her consent. That was only a year after the Ruch School photograph was taken.

And volunteer Charlotte Henry came up with a 1914 tax roll showing the sum of $1,860 next to Jonas Fattig for the Applegate farm. With a little more digging she quickly determined the figures represented the assessed value, not delinquent taxes.

"So, you don't owe the $1,860 after all," she jokes.

But I had my inheritance: increased knowledge about those who came before me.

Reach reporter Paul Fattig at 776-4496 or at pfattig@mailtribune.com