Sepia Saturday 292: Money, Banking, Guards, Notes
Category: Sepia Saturday
Sepia Saturday 291: Television, Shops, Furniture
I’m tuned in to another episode of Sepia Saturday this week, featuring televisions! You’d be shocked to know this is the only photo I could find with a television in it from my grandparents’ collections, this one coming from that of my grandma Norma (Innocenti) Rachocki who is sitting on the couch on the left with a small dog. In the center, I think, is Nellie Gasparri and I’d be willing to bet that’s John Rachocki’s knee on the right. No kids, so I have to date this to the early half of the 1950s. Television out that way in central PA, at best, is still only about three channels. Most areas don’t run cable for cable TV, so you have to rely on an antenna (Still, I know, it’s crazy). The house is decorated up for what looks like Christmas, and the house has a myriad of clashing prints between the wallpaper and carpet. The TV doesn’t appear to be on, or perhaps the camera wasn’t able to capture the image on the screen in the photo, but Norma does appear to be looking at the television (or just not looking directly at the camera. It’s very unlike the other photos we have, to have such a casual sort of photo in a living room type area – most folks didn’t use film this way and saved photos for special events and occasions, so it’s really rather precious. I suppose I find a way for every family photo to be special because they all are to me anyway!
Short and sweet this week as we take it to the Sepia Saturday commercial break.
Sepia Saturday 289: Hotels, Illustrations, Design
I’m a few days late getting my entry together for Sepia Saturday, but better late than never, right? I didn’t have anything quite as lovely as the hotel postcard from the prompt image, but I thought a postcard of a lovely palace in Germany. The Schloss Philippsruhe is located in Hanau, Germany where Gordon Shugg was stationed in the Army. Gordon Thomas Shugg married Alberta “Bessie” Lee Efird December 13, 1952 in this very palace as per the postcard which reads,
19 June
Dear Olga –
Think I sent you a card from Englind. Back in Germany again now. Visited with Aunt’s in England and saw the queen. This is a picture of the castle where we were married Dec 13 “52”
Love
Bess & Gordon
The postmark indicates this was sent June 21, 1954 from the Army Postal Service. Gordon Shugg was in the Army during WWII and afterwards, finally retiring as a CWO4. As for the rest of his life story, he was born to Bessie (Battin, sister to my great-great grandmother) and Arnold Shugg on 10 Jan 1905 in Plympton, Devon, England. In 1911, he arrived in the USA with his mother, brother, and father. Gordon is listed as married and living with Bessie and their 4 year old daughter, Mary, on the 1940 census, so I’m not sure why they say they were married in 1952 in Germany. Perhaps there’s a good story there that I haven’t found yet! Gordon and Bess returned home from Germany in 1955, though their daughter doesn’t show on the passenger manifest. I suppose it’s possible Mary stayed home with other family while her parents were away. Gordon died young, at age 56, on 2 Oct 1961 in Virginia. My postcard from Bess and Gordon isn’t nearly as old as the pictured hotel postcard, but it brought me a bit of genealogical data and a new mystery to work out!
Sepia Saturday 289: Beach, Holidays, Summer, Sea
Another Sepia Saturday is already upon us! This week brings us a prompt image of a beautiful beach, but unfortunately I have no family that lived on/near beaches or who took and saved photos from a beach vacation. We’re not a beach/shore kind of people, it seems! However, my husband’s family came to the USA from the Netherlands on a boat in 1951 which fits the bill for at least the “sea” part of the theme. On February 13, 1951, the S.S. Volendam departed from Rotterdam, Netherlands, bound for America. Two families who apparently didn’t know eachother prior to the journey, met and became friends on the 12 day journey, or friends enough to take a picture and share it later on. The photo looks like it was taken on board the ship, on their first day according to the inscription on the back. Google Translate tells me the inscription, written in Dutch, says, “To remember the boat trip to America,” and is signed the Jansens Family. I hadn’t heard the name before, they weren’t family friends that I knew of, so I set out to figure out who this Jansens Family was. By luck, they were listed just above my husband’s family on the passenger list (link). My husband’s grandparents are in the back row, 2nd and 3rd in from the left – Hilje “Hilda” Dijkema (1914-1997) and Doede “Douglas” Jaarsma (1911-1995). The head of the Jansens family was Pieter Jansens and his wife, Janna, along with 10 of their 18 children. I recently got in contact with a descendant of Jacobus (the man in the back row on the far left with the camera bag) who filled me in on some details of the family who ended up in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The Jaarsma family went to northern New Jersey and pretty much stayed in the area. It’s sweet that the Jansens family sent along a copy of the photo after arriving at their destination, and that Hilda and Douglas kept it all these years. It was really neat to connect with a descendant of the Jansens family and share the photo back with them, and I’m happy to share it as this Sepia Saturday sails off into the sunset.
Sepia Saturday 288: Shops, Butchers, Pigs
A challenge this week indeed! The prompt image for Sepia Saturday (shown below) featured a butcher shop and I knew right off the bat that I had absolutely nothing like it. Luckily, we get a preview a few weeks in advance and I managed to remember the photo above. Picutred is a man who I believe is Waldo Orvis “Jack” Powis (1905-1981), brother to my great grandmother Olga Powis. He’s standing with a dead bear who was probably hunted in Pennsylvania. Jack didn’t live in PA at the time, but he may have been out visiting his family in central Pennsylvania and posed with the bear for a photo. It’s not often that a person can safely get within any distance of a bear like that, so I’m sure it was quite the novelty! It’s not a butcher shop, but I have to imagine that the hunters used the bear meat for food since the presumed area where it was shot wasn’t in great shape economically (and still isn’t). There’s no date or inscription on the photo, but I’d guess it was taken to be somewhere between 1950 to 1960.
Sepia Saturday 287: Groups, Students, Unsmiling Faces
Groups of students with unsmiling faces? This Sepia Saturday was built for me, I’m sure of it! One of the things my great grandmother Olga (Powis) Kitko saved over the years were her school photos, and we’ll go through a few of them today. There are still plenty more though, so this hasn’t exhausted my collection in the least. She was born in 1900, and in the photo above, she appears to be about age 8 or 9 or so (third girl from the left in the front row, marked with an x on her sleeve). There’s no date or marking on the back, but it’s a real photo postcard with an AZO stamp box showing three triangles up and one down which Playle’s guide says is 1911. Pretty exact, though I would have put my guess a year or two prior. The school here is probably the Blain City school house across the street from where Olga grew up.
This one has no identifying information with it whatsoever – nothing on the back at all and it’s even mounted on a heavy cardboard mat with frame. Best guess on this one is probably 1912 or 1913. Olga is third in from the left, front row. It appears to be the same school steps again as well.
This one is labelled on the back, “8th Grade Kids,” in Olga’s shaky handwriting indicative of her later years. That would make the date of the photo about 1913-1914 or so depending on when it was taken. Here Olga is on the left in the front row, standing again on the same steps as the prior two photos.
This is Olga’s High School Graduation photo taken about four years after the prior photo to finish out the set. In the folder with the photo, she included a list of the students, but it appears to be incomplete. It’s titled, “BTHS Graduates, 1919,” for Beccaria Township High School and lists these students:
- Back Row: Covert Hegarty, Dean Gates, Dean Wagner, Hazel Mark, Violet Glass (missing 1 student)
- Middle Row: Ruth Westover, Don McGeehen, Jim Patterson, Ann Nevling, Stella Holingsworth, Ruth Stewart, Mildred Beaber (all accounted for)
- Front Row: Olga Powis, Blanch Ginter (all accounted for)
Not all the students have unsmiling faces – some have slight grins, but no full toothy smiles. It still gives me a smile to see Olga’s life documented out in school photos, and I’m glad these are still around to share!
Sepia Saturday 286: Fish, Museums, United States
This was a toughie. The Sepia Saturday theme this week is a drawing, not a photo, so it poses a bit of a challenge, but if I take it as a drawing or doodle, I actually have something that works! Grandpa Leon Kitko was quite the doodler, and in his sophomore year in high school at Beccaria Township High School (BTHS, which merged to become Beccaria-Coalport-Irvona high school after his sophomore year), he had a bunch of doodles of coal mining machinery. Having been fascinated with machines and how they work his whole life, and growing up surrounded by them in the coal mining country of central Pennsylvania, it’s no wonder he took to drawing them in his notebook. From a D-8 Caterpillar bulldozer, work truck, to a Bay City coal shovel, he covered the more commonly seen pieces of equipment. The work truck is even labelled, “George B Lynch, General Cont, Wil, Del,” presumably, Wilmington, Delaware. I don’t know of anyone by the name George Lynch who was friendly with the family, but he apparently saw the truck often enough to commit the name to memory.
Sepia Saturday 285: Postcards, Hotels, Buildings
