Sepia Saturday

Sepia Saturday 253: Miners, Angling, Fishy Tales, Three Men

By Sheetar 8 November 2014 7 November 2014

Well, no anglers, but we have miners in every section of the family tree for this week’s Sepia Saturday. The majority of my family lived in or around, at one point or another, central Pennsylvania, well known for its coal mining industry. There are SO many photos I can add in here, so I’ve picked out a few of the best, including a link and update to an old post. This is going to be a huge post, so bear with me.

This photo was originally posted here a few years ago. The label on the back reads, “Herb and D. Alexander on the way home,” and was written partly in great grandma Olga’s younger handwriting, then clarified below with, “on the way home,” in the handwriting more characteristic of her older years. Herb is definitely Alfred Herbert Powis, Olga’s brother, sitting on the left. D. Alexander is likely to be Dempster William Alexander (1898-1978) since he’s the only one from the local censuses who fit the age and name. Both boys grew up in Clearfield County in Pennsylvania and while I still can’t tell which mine this is, it’s just a fantastic picture of the equipment, the soot on their faces, the lunch pails, and everything. They’re not clean and posed – it’s more a relaxed sort of photo and one of my favorites from the collection. For a date, I’d estimate it around 1916 or so, prior to Herb going off to war.

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Fairly recently, I was going back through the scans of great grandma’s photo album when a pretty faded photo caught my eye. I’ve done a little bit of photo magic to increase the contrast, but it’s a really fantastic photo. The boy on the mining cart is Earl Powis Jr, son of Earl William Powis. You can see rails in the background and even what looks like a donkey about dead center above the cart. It’s neat to see the other side of what appears to be a similar car to the one at the top of this post with all the controls and whatnot. This one probably dates to 1927-1930.

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My grandfather, Leon Kitko (Olga’s son), ever the joker, wrote a few notes in his mining log book for the Ebensburg Coal Company. If you can’t read that, after the last printed line, it says, “and all the other ways in which you could kill yourself without even trying.” It was undoubtedly not the safest of work environments even if you followed all the safety precautions in the booklet. He grew up fascinated with coal mining and the machinery that went along with it, leaving behind a scrapbook full of photos of the machinery including photos of him as a child playing with replica toy coal shovels he built himself.

Two images Grandpa Leon took of coal miners and their families. Fred Frye on the left with a D-8 Bulldozer, and John Ruffin and family with a shovel in the background. One has the date of 1948, and I’m assuming the other is about the same date.

A Bay City Shovel at work in the coal mines. Most of these operations were strip mining, cutting away or stripping the side of a mountain to get at the veins of coal. Hardly glamorous work, and you can see a man’s rear sticking out of the door of the machine there, checking something or another.

Finally, the Bituminous Miner’s Certificate for my other grandpa, John Rachocki dated 31 October 1939. This is just a great document because it shows his birth date and place as well as the position he held (Mine Foreman). Grandpa John died when I was four, so I don’t remember him that well, so having paperwork like this is really precious to show who he was and what he did throughout life.

And that’s it! Just a few pieces of history for the mining industry in Clearfield County, Pennsylvania.

Sepia Saturday

Sepia Saturday 252: Help yourself, name tags, 50th Anniversaries, serving line, marquee, pots

By Sheetar 1 November 2014 29 October 2014

You know when you feel like you’re on a roll with themes? Yep! Two weeks in a row and I feel like I’ve got a perfect photo for the theme. Even better, this is an update to an older post.

While these two folks don’t appear to be related to me, they played a part in my great grandmother’s life and kept in contact for a number of years. I know I’ve mentioned before about how blood relatives weren’t the only people in the lives of our ancestors and it’s easy to forget that neighbors and friends played a role in their lives as well. This is another example of that. My great grandmother, Olga (Kitko) Powis, apparently referred to the daughter of Mr & Mrs William Howell as “Aunt” Nellie Eimer, but I don’t think they were actually related. The term appears to have been symbolic. Nellie was the daughter of William H Howell and Elizabeth “Lizzie” Smith who were married in 1863 in England and celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary on 17 September 1913, just a year and a few months before Lizzie died on 1 December 1914. Both came to the USA from Shropshire, England, bringing their two daughters, Nellie and Sarah, with them. I found an article about their celebration in the newspaper, and you can even see in the photo above that the roses mentioned in the article appear on William’s jacket and Lizzie’s lap. Pretty neat to be able to connect the article to the photo to have a very exact date for the photo! From other photos, I know William made several visits to my great grandmother and her mother over the years – he shows up in a few photos with them before he passed away in 1920. The trip is about 3.5 hours by car today, so I have to imagine they had some sort of special relationship to make that kind of journey a number of times though I’m not sure how or where they crossed paths. William and Lizzie arrived sometime around 1882 or so, and Olga’s mother Jessie didn’t arrive until about 1890. Jessie was only two years older than Nellie, but they lived in very different areas in England. I’d love to figure it out one day, but it doesn’t appear that the Howells have any living descendants. Nellie never had children, and while her sister Sarah had two children (Wilfred McCoy and Lucy Elizabeth McCoy Knickerbocker) it appears that Lucy’s child Frank Knickerbocker never had any children, and neither did Wilfred. It’s sort of weird to think that folks who made such an impression on the lives of my ancestors have no living descendants of their own.

Sepia Saturday

Sepia Saturday 251: Bobbies, bellies, bums, brushes, beards

By Sheetar 25 October 2014 26 October 2014

I’m a little late getting this one together, but better late than never! Fairly easy theme this week for me considering I have two photos of men in police uniform.

I believe both of these are of Earl Powis Sr. The one of the left looks to be of a PA state trooper uniform and on the right, it looks like an Amtrak police uniform. A story I recently heard says that Earl was a PA State Police officer and his brother Waldo also wanted to join the force, but he was married. The PA State Police didn’t allow married men to join until 1963. So, Waldo got divorced, but his application still wasn’t accepted. I haven’t been able to verify that on paper records, but the timeline makes sense. Most of this is speculation and stories. I’m fairly sure both of those photos are Earl, but there are no identifications on the back side. The photo on the left has a date, “Mar 29, 1960” but nothing else to let us know who or where. I believe Earl was also an Amtrak police officer which is why I’m saying the one on the right is an Amtrak Police uniform. The Amtrak police was established in 1970. There’s a number on his cap that reads “131” but I haven’t been able to trace that to any specific barracks or division. Of course, I could be completely wrong on all accounts!

So, I guess this week’s prompt has given me a little more homework to do! Had I started this three weeks ago like I usually do, I’d have more to show for the theme. Now it’s time to wrap this up and try to get ahead of the game for next week.

EDIT – 26 Oct 2014: Having put a little time between throwing the post together last minute and now, I’m leaning towards those two photos being Waldo Powis. I know he lived in Brooklyn for the last half of his life, and there apparently was a 131st precinct in Brooklyn at some point. I still need to find out if Waldo was a member of the NYPD, but it’s worth persuing since I’m now 99% sure that’s him in those uniforms. Time to ask living family members more questions!

Sepia Saturday

Sepia Saturday 250: Street traders, artisans, shoes, tools of the trade, mending, hand-colouring

By Sheetar 18 October 2014 13 October 2014

While I am a little bit of a late-comer to Sepia Saturday, it’s pretty impressive that they’ve had 250 Saturdays of prompts! Joining in on the fun has been great for me – it keeps me actively blogging and actively working on the thousands of photos in the collection. I’m not kidding, thousands. I really need to get together a post on the entirety of the big trunk one of these days because it’s SUCH a gem, but that’s something for another post. Today I’ve decided to explore hand-coloring to fit in with the theme.

But wait! That’s not a hand-colored photo? What gives?! I’ve never quite seen anything like this before, so I wanted to share it. The boys in the photo appear to be Alfred Herbert Powis and Earl William Powis, Sr dated probably at about 1900 judging on the apparent ages of the two boys. They don’t look terribly amused, and the older boy, Alfred, is shooting daggers at someone just to camera right. They’re set up to roll those hoops with sticks which was a popular kids game over the course of many centuries. On the back of the photo are specific orders for reprints including instructions for hand coloring! I’ve modified the color/contrast to make the back easier to read, but as far as I can tell, it goes like this,

Nov 6.
Mrs. Alfred Powis
Blaine City, PA
Bust of both 20×16. Hair both golden light. Eyes blush gray. Very fair complexion. Cheeks pink. White waists. Little boys coat blue, largest boy coat gray trimmed with brown. Don’t have largest boys looking down much and make face angle & light.

It’s probably not a perfect transcription of the very faded pencil on the back, and the initials at the bottom “WH” don’t match the photographer. Instead of a photographic reprint, perhaps their mother was having painted or artistic renderings done from the photo. I never have found the reproductions made from this photo, but it’s neat to be able to see what the colors of their jackets were in the written record.

Here’s the hand-colred image! This is of my grandmother, Norma Innocenti probably when she was about 15, so around 1936. The colors used seem to be blue, pink, and green – pretty simple, but I’m sure it was an expense when times were difficult, to have an image reprinted and hand-colored. There are so few photos of my grandmother when she was young since that side of the family wasn’t big into pictures. Check out those shoes with the striped socks and printed dress! I love it! None of the other photos from this side of the family are colored in like this, so the photo is rather unique. I’m told that there were never photos hanging on the wall or anywhere in the house while my grandmother was growing up. It just wasn’t something they did. Compare that to the family for the boys above that comes with thousands of photos, and my collection is REALLY lopsided. However, that means that the few photos we do have from my grandmother’s family are extra special.

Sepia Saturday

Sepia Saturday 249: Coach Rides, Old Transport, Animated Discussion, Cab Drivers

By Sheetar 11 October 2014 7 October 2014

A neat theme this week for Sepia Saturday, and after a little thinking, I decided to go with this image since it’s a bit of a peculiarity in the photo collection. It’s mounted on heavy cardboard with a frame and is about 8″x10″ sized. There’s a very specific date and time, but no details as to who or where! Odd! The back is completely blank so I haven’t posted it here. The vehicle looks like a fire engine with a bell at the back and a tank for holding water perhaps just behind the seat. There are also hooks on the back and sides and even a length of hose lying just above the back wheel. By the looks of it, a building or something made of brick collapsed on top of the vehicle.

So, I set out to various newspaper archives to see what I could find. It was likely in central Pennsylvania, and since I have a date and a pretty specific idea of what happened, it was easy to narrow it down. There was a fire in Johnstown, PA on 17 March 1918 that started around 3am. An article even references the fact that, “A falling wall crushed a $12,000 triple combination truck purchased from the Lafrance concern last summer and felled three firemen who were standing nearby. These men, however, escaped with slight injuries.” The fire truck from the photo, based on the description of the truck, appears to be an exact match to the one from the video below.

The truck, before being crushed by a brick wall, was a 1917 LaFrance triple combination (pump, chemical, hose). So, now we have the where, what, and when, but the why and who are still a mystery. I haven’t been able to find any clear connection to anyone in Johnstown at that time – none of the fire fighters involved, from what I can find, were related, nor were any names of known family friends. If I happen to sort out the puzzle, I’ll be sure to post that here, but in the meantime, there’s a good article below about the fire and the nearly million dollars of damage caused.

Sepia Saturday

Sepia Saturday 248 – The Little Guy, Package from Home, Magazine Covers

By Sheetar 4 October 2014 4 October 2014

This week was a tough one. The prompt image for this week’s Sepia Saturday is nothing at all like what I have in my collection of family photos, and I’ve really been trying to both stay on theme and use only family photos. It’s helped me a lot to further explore the collection of photos and bring me to some new discoveries, identifications, and even a few connections I might have otherwise missed in terms of genealogy and family history. While this set isn’t of a family member, and it’s a bit of a stretch on the theme, the young boy in the photos was clearly close to my great grandmother, Olga (Powis) Kitko and great grandmother, Jessie (Battin) Powis. Hey, he’s a little guy in a uniform, I’m going to make it work!

Luther Boyd Wagner was born 8 Jan 1916 in Coalport, Clearfield County, Pennsylvania, the second child of Boyd Robinson Wagner and Mary Elizabeth Harris who you may remember from a previous Sepia Saturday post. I was going back through photos to find an image for this prompt, when I realized that the boy in the sailor suit (right, about 1921) matched a young boy in another photo that had names listed on the back (left, Luther & Merle Wagner, about 1917)! I did some quick hunting to find out if Luther Wagner was still around and unfortunately found that he had passed away 27 Nov 1999 in Hollidaysburg, Blair County, PA. Still, his family clearly had a strong connection to mine and it’s interesting to see how long they kept in contact, as children were born, grew up, etc. It’s easy to forget, when doing genealogical research, that the folks who shaped the lives of our ancestors weren’t always blood related, and sometimes ties to friends and neighbors were stronger than the connection to family an ocean away.

Sepia Saturday

Sepia Saturday 247: Motorbikes, pillions, uniforms, couriers, turban, tents (again), towels

By Sheetar 27 September 2014 16 January 2022

I had only one lonely motorbike in my collection of family photos, but no person on it and no real story about it, so I decided to go with uniforms for this week’s Sepia Saturday. The uniform is that of my grandfather, John Rachocki. He served in the Air Force from 21 July 1941 through 13 Dec 1945 as a driver, acheiving the grade of Sergeant. Back then, the Air Force was still part of the Army and was the “Army Air Force.” He served for only 1 year and 18 days abroad, involved in the Rhineland campaign. I don’t know much about his service, but we have a few photos of him in uniform at various places during his service in the Air Force. I was only four when he passed away, so I have very few memories of him but am told he was a gentle giant (at 5’11”) who only spoke when he had something to say. Upon returning after service in the Air Force, he worked as a coal miner in Pennsylvania until he retired, living out his life in the house that he built.

Sepia Saturday

Sepia Saturday 246: Children, tents, fences, fields, poppies, smocks, sailor-suits

By Sheetar 20 September 2014 18 September 2014

Well, I couldn’t resist posting these two for this week’s Sepia Saturday. When I saw the prompt photo, these two immediately came to mind, mostly because they match the prompt photo so well! I’ve pasted what’s written on the back of the photo at the bottom of the image because it’s fun to see the handwriting, especially from other countries. I think the photos are probably from about 1930 +- 5 years and are from my husband’s Dutch family, likely taken somewhere in northern Holland.

Left Photo: We have, Left to Right, Ellechien Dijkemna, Geertje Bouwman, and Willemina Dijkema. “Elly” and “Mien” were sisters of my husband’s paternal grandmother, Hilje Dijkema. Geertje is probably a family friend of some sort – I haven’t been able to connect her to the tree yet. I have to imagine that Hilje took the photo since she’s in the next photo.

Right Photo: Left to Right are Ellechien Dijkema and Hilje Dijkema. Different dog in this photo!

The set looks like a nice afternoon out somewhere. I can’t tell if they’re actualy camping or just using the tent for shade. Either way, it makes for a charming set of photos for this week’s theme, showing that the three sisters spent lots of time together as young girls.