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.
