Justfolk

Justfolk club

Posted: 26 Jan 2014


Taken: 26 Jan 2014

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Mystery picture

Mystery picture
When my maiden aunt (what a strange term!) died in 2001 at nearly
ninety years of age, she left behind a small collection of negatives
with pictures that none of us had ever seen. I scanned them and
circulated them to my family in hopes we could figure out who the
people were. The best we could do here, with this one, was guess that
the woman in the lower right of this picture was our aunt's mother and
that the woman standing behind her was in turn her mother -- my
great-grandmother jauntily leaning against the post.

My grandmother was born in 1884, and the woman in the bottom right
looks to be a teenager here so, if it's her, the picture would be
taken about 1900. But her mother was born in the 1850s and that jolly
older woman looks older than fifty. But then, as they say, fifty is a
lot younger today than it used to be. And perhaps it's her
grandmother.

I like to imagine that the others are my grandmother's brothers and
sisters, but my second-cousins tell me that no one here looks like
their grandmother. In any case, it seems the two women on the right
were visiting the rest of them. On the right, we see outdoor, somewhat
dressy clothes, and on the left we see round-about-the-house clothes.
I don't know if kitchen staff wore hairnets a hundred years ago, but
the woman on the top left does seem to have one on. But I think that
may be just an illusion since, if anything like that were worn, a
bandana of some sort would have been far more likely. And I would
think she'd remove it for the photo, even such a casual one as this.

The picture *might* be of my aunt herself. That woman in the
lower right could be her, which would place this picture at about 1925 - 1930.
She was born 1912 and the lower-right person is probably in her teens.

I don't have the negative right at hand but I remember it being about
2x3 inches (maybe 5 x 7 cm) and it was cut as a single negative,
probably for contact printing at the time.

Hmmm. I should find it and put it in protective freezing since it's
probably a nitrate base!

Comments
 Justfolk
Justfolk club
'Tis. :)
I've ended up with parts of the archives of at least four ancestral streams. I should spend more time trolling through my families' old pictures.
10 years ago.

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