Sepia Saturday

Sepia Saturday 308

By Sheetar 5 December 2015 2 December 2015

The prompt image for Sepia Saturday 308 featured a man walking along a beach with his dog. I thought about it for a second, and since my family lived mostly the center of Pennsylvania over the last 100 years, an area with no sandy beaches, I decided I had plenty of photos of men with dogs and took the easy way out this week! Pictured above is Leon Kitko with “Tramp.” The back of the photo says that it was taken in May 1971 and that Tramp was Lynn Adams’ dog. If I’ve got my facts right, the dog wasn’t Lynn Adams’ for very long and Leon basically ended up adopting the dog since he spent more time with Leon than anyone else. There are bunches of photos of Tramp in the collection of Polaroids from the 1970s proving that he was a beloved pet and companion for a number of years. Anyone who has had a family dog knows exactly what I’m talking about, and we have two rescue pups who share our home. Just like grandpa, we’ve taken countless photos of our dogs and share them with anyone (and everyone). While people might think it’s odd to save photos of grandpa’s pets, I feel a sort of nostalgia for them even though I never knew any of these pets. Beyond that, the photos work to paint a bigger picture about the sort of person Grandpa was – all the photos of pets show he was an animal lover. To me, they’re not just a mass of photos of pets, but photos taken with love to remember a life shared with furry companions.

Sepia Saturday

Sepia Saturday 307

By Sheetar 28 November 2015 24 November 2015

Sometimes the propmt image for Sepia Saturday isn’t quite an exact match to the subject, but more matches the feeling and composition of the photo like we have here. The prompt image featured a group of kids playing some sort of game, standing in a circle. The girls in the photo above aren’t standing or playing any sort of apparent game, but they’re sitting in a circle just the same. At the center of the circle is presumably the teacher or leader and dthe girls all look to be in their early to mid teens. Hilje Dijkema, my husband’s grandmother, is at the very far left of the photo, leaning on her elbow. The photo was likely taken in or around Uithuizen, Groningen, Netherlands and the back of the photo says, “Meisjes Vereiniging, 1931,” which translates roughly to, “Girls Club,” and dates the photo to 1931 which makes Hilje 17 years old. Hilje didn’t go to school beyond about 5th grade, but the family was very religious so this could have been some sort of church club for girls. I don’t see any bibles or books though, and I don’t know who any of the other girls are. It’s still a charming photo of the group of them and I rather like how they’re all sitting neatly in a circle.

Sepia Saturday

Sepia Saturday 306

By Sheetar 24 November 2015 24 November 2015

Late again! As usual, better late than never though. The prompt photo this week featured boys at school playing some sort of game with their caps. I didn’t quite have anything like it, but I did have this, which, as the back of the photo states, is a Sunday School class in England probably around 1910 or thereabouts based on the older girls’ dresses. LOTS of caps and hats of all sorts! I’m not entirely sure where this was taken, but given the family that it came from, it was probably somewhere in the south of England in Devon or Cornwall. There’s still some family from the Battin branch that resides there, and I know Jessie (Battin) Powis kept in touch with friends and family. The pretty outfits and elaborate hats makes me think this was taken for Easter, but it’s hard to tell with not much other frame of reference other than that the grass appears to be green and growing.

As a side note, I’ve grown sort of fond of posting these photos I know little about through the Sepia Saturday project because I’m not sure I’d know what to do with them otherwise!

Sepia Saturday

Sepia Saturday 305

By Sheetar 14 November 2015 24 November 2015

The Sepia Saturday prompt image this week featured a large hot air balloon in the process of being inflated. I’ll admit, I was stumped. I have not one single photo in my vast collection of family photos with any sort of balloon in it! So, I went a little broader and settled on air transit with some newer photos. The top photo shows an unknown airport with a Pan American airplane in the photo up front and a Pakistan International plane behind it. I don’t think either airline flies anymore, so it’s neat to see photos of these planes. The two on the bottom show an Eastern Air Lines plane on the right with an unidentified man standing in front of the plane. The left photo is a view of the prop out of the window of a plane, but I’m not entirely sure where! I’d assume east coast of the USA, but wherever it is, it’s a beautifully framed photo with the prop with the bridge and land in the distance. For all of the photos, I’d guess a time range to be mid 1950s to early 1960s or thereabouts given the other photos that were in the set with these. Even though none of these are balloons and don’t get me any closer to figuring out who the man in the one photo is, they still fit the theme enough to call it a win this week!

Edit 24 Nov 2015: My husband, frequent flyer that he is, identified the aerial view as the Bayonne Bridge and Shooters Island — takeoff from EWR. Google Map Link.

Sepia Saturday

Sepia Saturday 304

By Sheetar 10 November 2015 10 November 2015

Bringing back the ghost of a Sepia Saturday past for this week! For Sepia Saturday 234, I went over a visit my great grandma Olga (Powis) Kitko had with a childhood friend, Mildred Witherow, in Michigan. The theme image was “Spirit Photography” and while I don’t believe in ghosts or anything supernatural, I have this great photo above with a double exposure that ties in nicely since “Spirit Photography” was actually just deliberate double exposures whether it happened on the negatives themselves or during the printing process.

Anyway, I think it’s neat that my great grandma kept this photo since so many double exposures were discarded as mistakes. You can see Mildred on the far left, and Olga is sitting next to her in the glasses. I believe the man just to Olga’s left in the back left corner of the table is Alvin Witherow. They’re clearly having a nice dinner together, there are smiles and you can almost hear the laughter. Olga is the only one looking at the camera, so I have to guess that she handed her camera to someone to take a photo but no one else was looking at the photographer! I think it makes for a neat image overall, even with the inadvertent double exposure. The photo was developed in September of 1960 and from the other photos it looks like the visit was over the summer, so the film was developed and photos printed, I’d imagine, not long after they were taken. Olga was born in 1900 so she looks to be about 60 in the photo which helps confirm the date printed on the photo.

Sepia Saturday

Sepia Saturday 303

By Sheetar 31 October 2015 31 October 2015

Sepia Saturday edition 303 featured a prompt image of a Halloween greeting card. Since today is Halloween and Sepia Saturday, I might as well combine them both and post images of ghouls from the collection of family photos! These come from the collection of Romayne Louella Greenaway (30 May 1936 – 7 Jan 2014). They were negatives, and an old size of negative that wouldn’t fit in my negative scanner. Fortunately, they were flat enough that I was able to lay them on a light box and use my DSLR to photograph them, invert the image, and there they are! Romayne was my grandmother (step-grandmother if we’re getting technical, but she married my grandfather long before I was born so she was always grandma). I believe that’s here in the right image with the crazy mask, but it’s hard to tell! The other images in the series show four children, three of whom are Romayne and her two siblings, but everyone has a mask on, so I can’t be certain who the extra child is or even which child is in which costume. In the left image, again, I can’t be sure who that is, but I love it too much to not include it for the theme as well. It’s a fairly simple costume – big bows on her hair and ankles, long coat, and a mask! If I had to guess, I’d say these were taken right around 1950. The others in the set of negatives show Romayne, and she looks to be about 12 or 13 which is how I ended up at that date estimate.

Even though I’m not at a trick-or-treating age anymore, I’m still treating myself to zombie movies and a Halloween themed cupcake this evening and hope you all are enjoying a little treat for yourselves today too!

Sepia Saturday

Sepia Saturday 302

By Sheetar 30 October 2015 30 October 2015

The final catch-up post, I swear! This is last week’s Sepia Saturday featuring a woman playing a harp. I have no such similar image in my collection of family photos, but I do have plenty of other musicians including the guy in the photo above, Jaap Rop. These photos are all labelled, two listing “Jaap” and one listing “Jake” which is a common Americanized form of the Dutch name Jaap. Unfortunately, I don’t have a lot of details about Jaap other than that he’s the son of Willemina Dijkema (the husband’s grandmother’s sister) and Derk Rop. Another person on Ancestry lists him as having died in either 2006 or 2007, and I assume he was born somewhere in the mid 1930s. All the photos above look like they were taken in the mid 1950s.

Top photo: This one is taken with his cousin, Henk (Hendrik) Dijkema who was named for his grandfather.

Middle photo: The back reads, “Van de zomer bij ons in de bleek,” which translates to, “Summer with us in the pale,” which I think might be phrasing for, “in the flesh,” but I’m not a fluent Dutch speaker so I’m really guessing! It’s a really nice looking foot-pump organ though, but I have to wonder what it’s doing outside.

Bottom photo: Jaap Rop and his accordion. It looks to be a different and smaller accordion than the one in the top photo.

If you happen to be related to the Rop family and can add more detail, please contact me!

Sepia Saturday

Sepia Saturday 301

By Sheetar 28 October 2015 28 October 2015

Still catching up on Sepia Saturday posts now that I’m shedding vacation-brain and am settling back into the swing of things. This edition featured a photo of children all looking to the left, so I’m just going with the general theme of children. Since Sepia Saturday is officially going themeless, I thought it might be a good chance to take some identified photos and publish the genealogy data I have for those individuals since it may help someone else down the line. In the above photo, Doroth Powis is seated on the right, and the back of the photo reads, “Dorothy + a couple neighbors.” Dorothy, also called Dot, was the daughter of Harry Oscar Frederick “Fritz” Powis and Laura Johnson. She was born 27 December 1926 in Beccaria, PA and died 12 October 2013 in Tonawanda, NY. There are dozens of photos of her as a baby, so my great-grandmother Olga must’ve adored her quite a bit. Fritz and Laura divorced in 1936, and Dorothy shows up on th 1940 census living with her mother in Beccaria, PA where Laura was working as a seamstress. Laura married Clair J Harber in 1942 and lived to the old age of 101, passing away 25 Jun 2006.

Dorothy married Samuel Berger and adopted two girls, living the last 58 years of her life in Tonawanda, New York. I never had the chance to meet her, but seeing her smiling face in all the photos from my great grandmother’s collection makes me feel like I knew her a little better than the average stranger. Dorothy is my 1st cousin 2x removed, so she would’ve been a direct first cousin to my grandfather. As for the other kids in the photo, I have no clue who they were, but probably lived somewhere in Beccaria, PA.