On time this week for Sepia Saturday! The prompt post featured two French boys, and here I have two Dutch girls. On the left is Ellechien Dijkema (1912-1974) and on the right is Hilje Dijkema (1914-1997), my husband’s grandmother. It’s the oldest photo we have of her where her face is clearly visible and it’s quite a treasure! The girls are the youngest of 8 children, only 6 of whom made it past their 18th birthday. While the image doesn’t show it, the girls spent the majority of their early lives on the canals around Groningen, Netherlands with their father who ran a barge loaded with deliveries of peat logs for fuel, so the girls were no strangers to life on a boat. Hilje later married and even took a transatlantic voyage to the USA where she lived till her death. The back of the photo has a mark for the photo studio, Foto Steenmeijer (Heerestr. 421, Groningen) and is stamped in purple ink with the date 18 July 1927, so Hilje would’ve been 13 here. I absolutely love the details in the photo from the necklaces on the girls to their shoes, the bracelet on Ellechien, both of them with rings on, and the almost unseeable print on Hilje’s dress. As for the photo studio location, we probably walked past it while we were in Groningen this past Fall! There’s a bunch of great information about the photographer here (unfortunately in Dutch, but Google Translate handles it pretty well!)
Nice photo. I thought Hilje looked a lot younger than Ellechien, so I was surprised that they were so close in age..
I think at that age is when girls change the fastest, going from young girl to young adult woman, so while it looks like there are more years between them, it’s just a peculiarity of timing, I think.
Yes what a wonderful photo!
It would be interesting to read stories about living on the canals!
Both of them absolutely beautiful! Shoes, necklaces, rings; dress patterns. A lovely, lovely photograph!