There’s no doubt that the Stern looking gentleman is Jonathan Friend Cessna, William Wallace Cessna’s only brother. It’s the other photo which I have my doubts about. Three different descendants of Walter Cessna provided copies of this photo and said it was William Wallace Cessna and Marion Wallace Coombs. But Marion died in 1835, four years before history records the first portrait photo taken. For this to work, she would have had to have lived another decade or more, I’d guess.

A fourth cousin of mine (Jim Poteet, a descendant of Ella Cessna) pointed out another possibility: what if these are not Walter C. Cessna’s parents, but instead the parents of his wife Susan Walters? Joseph W. Walters and Susan Cessna fit the timeline better, and the woman in the photo sure looks like another Cessna. Now if any descendant of Walter Cessna’s five siblings had this photo in their family album, then I’ll eat crow. And you Walters descendants: did your family have this in the album?