Sepia Saturday

Sepia Saturday 276: Babies, Newlyweds

By Sheetar 25 April 2015 22 April 2015

I had a bunch of different options for this post for Sepia Saturday, but I figured I’d give my husband’s Dutch family a turn again! Here we have Ellechien Dijkema (1912-1974) and Luitje Huisman (1914-1986), date unknown. They were married 29 May 1936 in Groningen, Holland, so I have to assume this photo was taken around that time since it fits in with the dates of the other photos in the album. The second photo is of their first child, Nanne Huisman. So, fitting right into the theme, we have a newlywed couple and their first child!

Of course, I couldn’t resist posting just one more since this photo is really lovely even if there’s no label or identification to tell me who or when. I’d assume this was taken in Holland like the rest somewhere in the mid 1930s, but with no label on the back, I have no idea who these folks are! It’s possible that this is the same child as above – the heights and faces seem to match, but without an identification on the back, it’s hard to be absolutey sure. It’s possible this is another of the sisters or even a family friend or cousin. The photo is still really great between the couple standing together in their coats and hats and the child hanging on to the side of the stroller, probably just learning to walk. And that’s that for this week’s Sepia Saturday.

Sepia Saturday

Sepia Saturday 275: Cables, Wires, Ladders, Workers

By Sheetar 18 April 2015 31 August 2016

Today’s Sepia Saturday brings us a prompt image of men working on electrical lines. It’s a really unique image, I think, and not something I had a perfect match for, but it does open the door to men working which lets me post a really neat series of photos my grandpa Leon Kitko took in 1959. A train had derailed and he, being much like a nosy neighbor, went down to check it out and possibly get a glimpse of some neat new machinery he might not have seen before. From the number of photos with the same date stamp, he took (and kept) 8 photos of the event out of a roll of film and filled the rest with random shots of the countryside, his home, etc. If I assume that he wasted no time getting the film developed and photos printed, the most likely news story I could find was one about a coal car derailment on June 25, 1959 at 10:29am in Lumber City, Pennsylvania. The event even made the front page of the newspaper! In their haste, the newspaper didn’t quite complete the caption under the photo either (linked below). As the story reads, six coal cars were involved in the incident, caused by a coupler being pulled out of one of the cars, dropping to the rails, forcing the cars off the track and tearing up 150-200 feet of the track as well. Luckily, there were no injuries and it was only coal (not some sort of chemical) so cleanup was somewhat easier, being completed by 9:30 that night.

The photos my grandpa took are really interesting for many reasons. He’s captured a newsworthy story from a bunch of angles as well as showing the working man at his job. In one photo, you can see the piles of coal spilled out of the cars. In another, shovels and buckets lined up along the rails while a man reaches to grab a plate that sets the rail in place. In two photos, you can see a large piece of equipment rolling in to help remove the cars too damaged to continue on and set right those that could still roll along. It’s really a rather complete picture of the accident, and I’m glad he was that nosy neighbor who wanted to check out what I’m sure was a big topic of local gossip that week. As far as working cables from the theme into my post, that last photo of the crane should fit the bill!

Sepia Saturday

Sepia Saturday 274: Coal, Power, Horses, Carts

By Sheetar 11 April 2015 16 January 2022

Another theme involving coal mining! This Sepia Saturday theme is neat because the prompt image comes from the same state where most if not all of my ancestors lived. There were a number of coal miners in the family around WWI, and while I’ve already used my best image for that time period in Sepia Saturday #253, that doesn’t mean I don’t have a ton more waiting in the wings. In the two photos at the top, we have my grandpa, Leon Kitko (1933-2011), playing with a steam shovel toy he built himself as well as a photo of other home-made shovels. The photos were taken around 1946 (one is dated) and Leon would’ve been 13.

Scan1357

This photo is of an actual shovel in use at an unknown mine somewhere in Clearfield County, PA. The machine is a Bay City shovel – the company is still in business, though doesn’t make this particular machine anymore. Based on the photo type, this was probably taken around the same time as the others (maybe a year or two later than the first two). You can see the machine is pretty beat up and had probably seen better days, something I’d pretty much expect for a coal mine. This is likely one of the many machines Leon based his toys on, having seen his uncles and neighbors go to work in various mines. The most common type of mining done in that area is Strip Mining, in which the ground is stripped away from the coal deposit, leaving behind what looks like a large inverted cone shape in the earth. Driving around, you can still identify old strip mines based on shape alone – any perfect, unnatural slope with trees planted at even intervals was likely once a strip mine. Between the physical scars, the environmental scars, and the emotional scars (families who saw the loss of loved ones from accidents, black lung, etc), coal mining leaves behind a pretty dark legacy throughout Pennsylvania. For my grandfather at the time though, it was a thing of wonder to see machines that large move the earth with such ease.

Sepia Saturday

Sepia Saturday 273: Bicycles, Long Skirts, Newspaper Cuttings

By Sheetar 7 April 2015 7 April 2015

Hitting one out of three isn’t bad, right? And I get to post another one of my favorite photos from the trunk. I’m a little behind the schedule with this post for Sepia Saturday, but better late than never!

Scan10121b Pictured above is Earl William Powis Jr. (1922-2010) with a bicycle on August 24, 1930. A very exact date, and I actually know quite a bit about this photo! I presume it was taken by his mother, Anna (Plansky) Powis, who at that point, per the 1930 census, was divorced and living in Illinois with “Junior” as he was referred to on the census. She kept in close contact with my great grandma Olga Powis who was Earl Jr’s aunt, sister to his father, sending along many photos of Earl Jr. over the years.

Anna wrote on the back of the photo (shown at left), “This is not so good of him, but he likes it, said he liked it best even if the bike has a flat rear tire.” Kids, huh? The 8 year old Earl was more concerned about the state of the bike than how he looked in the photo! Olga likely added the identification at the bottom of the photo in pencil. There are MANY photos of young Earl in my great grandma’s collection so it seems like she and Anna (and Earl) corresponded frequently over the years even though Olga’s brother later remarried. Short and sweet again to wrap up another Sepia ~~Saturday~~ Tuesday!

Sepia Saturday

Sepia Saturday 272: Tractors, Agriculture, Wheels

By Sheetar 28 March 2015 25 March 2015

Another Sepia Saturday, and another great match for the prompt! I had posted this about a month ago on Google+ just for kicks because I liked the photo. In the photo is my grandpa, Leon Kitko riding a piece of machinery, a Clark CA1 Airborne Tractor. If I have my facts straight, this tractor is still hanging around albeit in a state of disrepair. The neat part about the tractor is that it was built during World War II for the purpose of being light and small enough to be able to be flown in by glider or even dropped by parachute to the ground to help clear land for landing strips for larger aircraft. It’s a pretty neat machine! I’m not sure how my grandpa came to own one though, but it was in working condition at some point as the photo shows. Grandpa wasn’t a farmer and I don’t think he had any real need for a bulldozer, but he was a tinkerer and mechanic who could fix just about anything, so I’m sure when the opportunity came along, he was more than happy to add this machine to his collection. The back of the polaroid is labelled, “Aug 1969, Leon and his bulldozer,” and was likely taken by his wife, Romayne. It’s a bit of a newer photo than the prompt photo and probably one of the most recent I’ve used for a Sepia Saturday, but I couldn’t resist since it was such a good fit. There are SO many in this series (more recent photos from grandpa’s collection) that I really ought to delve into them more, but we’ll bulldoze through them soon enough!

Sepia Saturday

Sepia Saturday 271 – Horses, Rivers, Drinking

By Sheetar 21 March 2015 20 March 2015

This was a pretty easy prompt for Sepia Saturday this week! It took a few seconds of thinking to remember this photo, another from the collection of my husband’s Dutch family. In the photo are Hilje “Hilda” Dijkema (1914-1997) and her sister, Ellechien Dijkema (1912-1974) on the horse. The back of the photo is labelled, “Ellie en Hillie,” but has no date. The majority of the photos in this album are from the mid to late 1930s, so I’d estimate the date around 1930 or even a hair earlier, maybe even taken around the same time as a photo from another Sepia Saturday post. The girls look to be in their late teens and the photo was most likely taken in northern Holland around Groningen. The girls are riding with no saddles, stirrups or anything, and in heels! As usual, I’m curious as to who took the photo – another sister perhaps? There are only two horses though, so maybe it was taken as they were returning home from a ride. As far as I know the family didn’t own a farm or horses, so they were likely visiting family or friends at the time. Whatever the circumstances, it’s a really lovely photo showing the closeness between these two sisters. They show up in a bunch of photos toether, likely since they were only two years apart in age. And now I’ll let this Sepia Saturday ride off into the sunset, until next week!

Sepia Saturday

Sepia Saturday 270: Puppies, Air Crew, Hugs

By Sheetar 14 March 2015 10 March 2015

When I first saw the prompt image for this week in the “Coming Soon” lineup on Sepia Saturday, I immediately knew which image to share this week. It’s almost uncanny how similar the photos are, from the person in uniform to the dog and everything! Unfortunately, I have no idea who the man was. I posted on Google Plus to see if someone might be able to identify his rank and unit from the patches on his sleeve in hopes of narrowing it down. Sure enough, a helpful community member was able to tell me he was Army, an E5 (Sergeant), and the patch was for the 3rd Army Corps. Location? Likely central Pennsylvania, somewhere near Clearfield or Altoona, but I can’t be sure where since there’s no identifying information on any of the photos. A wikipedia article points to the reference that there was a 3rd Army Corps area that included Pennsylvania. These photos were taken around 1945 (one of them is dated), so it fits the dates for the WWII organizational structure. That same man appears in a photo with my great grandma Olga (Powis) Kitko with a very faint label on the back, “Joe thinks picture is good,” so I have to wonder if she they were perhaps romantically involved. My grandpa Leon would’ve been 12 in 1945, and his father had disappeared shortly after he was born around 1933, but Olga’s divorce didn’t finalize till 1946. If they were somehow involved, he didn’t stick around long since I don’t remember him and neither does my dad. There are only a dozen or so photos of him from just around 1945.

Wouldn’t you know it though, puppies grow into dogs… That may be the puppy’s mother though since the markings are different enough, but it’s hard to tell since puppies can grow up to look so different!

Sepia Saturday

Sepia Saturday 269: Music, Dance, Polkas, Violets

By Sheetar 7 March 2015 4 March 2015

Another photo of band members for this week’s Sepia Saturday! I’m sure at one point, I’ll exhaust my collection of these, but it’s fun to explore two very differnt photos two weeks in a row. There’s no label on this photo so I have no idea who these two gents are. They don’t appear in any other photos in the family collection either. I have to assume they were family friends of the Powis family and specifically of Herbert Powis from last week’s post. The cap seems similar to last week, but this uniform is a little more elaborate, and the photo was taken in a proper studio by photographer J. Krismer in Coalport, Pennsylvania. It looks to me like the man on the right has a trumpet and the man on the left a euphonium. A short and sweet post this week since I don’t have a lot of information on these two men, but given they were playing in Pennsylvania, I have to imagine they played a polka or two in their band days.

Lest we forget those polkas, I’d like to post my favorite Polka, the Pennsylvania Polka, representing the state where these two men lived.