Tag: powis

Another week in our, “From Here to There,” theme for Sepia Saturday!  This week, I thought I’d feature a car and my great grandmother, Olga (Powis) Kitko.  The back of this is labelled, “Me & Joe’s Car,” which, from a previous post, helped lead me to identify a photo of my great grandfather as well.  That car is featured in a number of photos with either Olga or Olga and a friend sitting in or on it, and it seems to have been quite the prize for Joe to have.  I assume this is around 1930, possibly plus or minus about 2 years.  Olga is wearing a rather pretty outfit between the shoes and dress and I have to wonder if possibly this was taken to commemorate their wedding.  I haven’t yet been able to find a marriage certificate for Olga Powis and Joseph Kitko despite a lot of searching.  My suspicion was that they stayed together under a  common-law marriage, but now that I sit here and think about this image, it’s entirely possible they did get married out of state or somewhere I didn’t think to look yet.  So, I’m left with more questions than when I started this post, but it gives me a few more things to think about!

For this week’s Sepia Saturday, our prompt image featured a man walking down a street.  My photo here is instead of a man standing, but wearing about the same clothes and holding the same sort of hat as the man in our photo!  This is clearly taken in the winter and likely near his childhood home – there are no leaves on the trees and it looks like there’s snow or ice on the ground.  If I had to guess on a date for the photo, I’d say probably mid to late 1920s.  The man in the photo is Waldo Orvis Powis, born 5 April 1906 in Beccaria, Clearfield County, Pennsylvania and died on 3 Jul 1981 in Flushing, Queens, New York.  My great grandmother was this man’s sister and wrote on the back of the photo with the handwriting indicative of her later years, “Waldo, Jack the Duke.”  I’ve seen Waldo referred to as Jack a number of times, and while I’m not sure how he came across that nickname, I can only imagine he preferred it to Waldo!

Waldo married Irma Catherine McGarvey on 10 April 1926.  He later divorced her on 1 October 1934 and married not even a year later on 3 August 1935 to Anna Josephine Capko.  He spent two years in the Navy from 1942 to 1944.  At some point before 1950, but after his Navy service, he moved to Queens and lived  there with Anna till his death in 1981.  He had two children with Irma, Shirley and Kenneth, though it looks like the kids went with their mother to Minnesota.

It’s not necessarily a super special photo this week, but a nice one nonetheless, probably taken by his sister, Olga.  I’m glad Olga went back and pencilled on a label, though I’m fairly sure I could’ve identified this as Waldo without the label at this point.  Looking forward to next week!

A pretty easy  prompt photo for this week’s Sepia Saturday!  The prompt photo featured a series of portraits of a baby, and boy do I have baby photos since my great-great grandmother, Jessie Battin, was apparently obsessed with baby photos!  There are a few that are identified, but many appear to be of friends – some may be family, but they’re unlabelled and baby photos can be so hard to match up to adult photos.  In the above set are two labelled photos.  On the left is Earl William Powis, born 15 October 1896 in Pennsylvania.  On the right  is Olga Mary Louise Powis, born 27 August 1900 in Pennsylvania.  Even though they’re only 4 years apart, the photos were taken by different photographers and even used different gowns!  The face on poor Earl just gets me though – what a grumpy little face he has on.

While I have lots of these old baby photos, I thought I’d finish off the post with these two.  On the left is Harry Oscar Frederick “Fritz” Powis, born 1 May 1903 in Pennsylvania.  On the right is an unidentified photo of two babies who I assume would be twins!  It was probbaly taken around the same time as the others (late 1890-1910 or so) and was done at a studio in Pittsburgh, “J. H. Truxell.”  All the photos here are from different photographers around central Pennsylvania – three from Coalport and one from Pittsburgh.  So, to wrap it up, just a few old (over 100 years old!) baby photos to fit with the theme this week.

The prompt image for Sepia Saturday this week featured a group of men playing, “Push Ball.”  It’s a game I’ve never heard of before, but  taken as a group of men, my image fits in!  Something about the prompt image immediately brought this one to mind, so I’m going with it.  The image is from a set taken by Earl William Powis (15 Oct 1896 – 26 Mar 1973) while he was serving in the Navy during WWI (1917-1919, stationed at Yorktown, Virginia.  It doesn’t look like Earl is in this photo, so I’m assuming he was the photographer and took a photo of a few of his friends to send home.  The back has no label or precise date, so all we know is that they’re Navy men stationed at Yorktown and a two year span which isn’t terrible in terms of identifying an unlabelled photo!