By Lydia PatrickShareNewsweek is a Trust Project memberAn artist who regularly collects antique photography says she was stunned after purchasing a 19th-century portrait that turned out to be an uncanny double of her wife.
Avery Klein (@thedeaddetective) shared on TikTok what unfolded when she came across a carte de visite of “Sarah Somes” on eBay. The story has since captured the internet’s imagination, drawing 1.9 million likes and 10.6 million views.
"She looked surprisingly similar to my wife, Casey, especially in the eyes," Klein told Newsweek. "There was an instant sense of familiarity. I turned my computer toward my wife, who was sitting next to me on the couch, and she giggled and shrugged. I come across doppelgängers almost daily in my work, so it didn’t initially strike me as anything unusual. But once I clicked away from the listing, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. A minute later, I bought the photograph and told my wife I had to get it, still not thinking too deeply about why the face felt so familiar,"
...A Deeper Look Into the Mystery
Klein explained that she has spent the past three years identifying people in 19th-century photographs and is a 2025 grant recipient from the Artist Creative Fund in Tulsa, Oklahoma. She regularly purchases antique images as part of her archival project.
She told Newsweek that she bought the photograph in September, but it wasn’t until November that she began trying to determine which Sarah Somes it depicted. Because the surname matched the studio stamp on the back, she suspected a family connection. Research confirmed that Sarah’s father, Alson Somes, operated as “A. Somes” at 149 Union Street in Schenectady, New York.
While searching census records, Klein discovered that Alson was listed as an artist and that 17-year-old Sarah was also described as an artist—an uncommon notation, particularly for a young woman in the 19th century. That detail struck Klein, whose wife is a painter. In another census, Alson appeared as a “Daguerreian Artist,” while Sarah was recorded as an oil painter. Klein said she “genuinely shoved [her] computer aside in shock.”
She believes Sarah likely worked with her father as an oil-paint retoucher, noting that a Schenectady city directory advertisement offered “Ambrotypes, Photographs, Plain and Colored, In Oil,” which supports the theory that Sarah helped produce hand-colored portraits. The combination of census descriptions and business records “aligns almost too perfectly to be a coincidence,” Klein said.
...She added that although she frequently encounters photographic doubles in her work, this discovery felt different. There was a familiarity in the young woman’s eyes she “couldn’t shake,” as though Sarah “was reaching across time, asking to be known.”
TikTok Response and Ongoing Research
Klein said she never expected her TikTok to resonate so widely. She still gets chills thinking “about the possibility that this could be a past life of Casey’s,” and said that viewers have flooded her inbox asking how she uncovers these historical identities. As part of her grant project, she is already planning public workshops—both in-person and online—to help others learn how to research their own family histories and identify figures in antique photographs.
Her search for Sarah continues. The paper trail becomes faint after 1865, though Klein confirmed that Sarah’s father died in January 1866 and is buried in Vale Cemetery in Schenectady. His gravestone is broken, and Klein hopes that members of TikTok’s gravestone restoration community may eventually help decipher the inscription and shed light on what became of Sarah.
Klein is continuing to seek help from historians and welcomes any information about “Miss Sarah Somes of 149 Union St.”
TikTokers React
TikTok users quickly embraced the romantic, uncanny, almost cinematic nature of Klein’s discovery.
“Did you just…..love her in every lifetime?” asked Katie.
Another commenter, Kaitlyn, was fixated on an unexpected detail: “Why are we not talking about the EARS?! Wild!!!!!”
One user shared a similar experience: “I bought an old 1800 pic at a thrift store of a man I thought was so handsome… 3 years later I ran into a man who looked like him and we hit [it] off and got married a year later. We’ve been happy ever since.”
Others leaned into the past-life theory: “What if you actually found her in her past life too??? And this is one of those ‘I’ll find my way back to you in every lifetime’ moments,” wrote Naomi.
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