sepia saturday – Page 14

Sepia Saturday 257: Lassoo, Dad and Son, Porch, Dog, Cowboy

By Sheetar 6 December 2014 4 December 2014

When I saw the prompt image a few weeks ago in the “coming soon” section on Sepia Saturday, I immediately thought of this photo. It’s been a bit of a thorn in my side as far as finding out who everyone is, but I’ve made some progress since the beginning. Here’s the rundown of who’s who (or who I think is who) with uncertain identifcations marked with a question mark.

Back, Left to right: Jessie (Battin) Powis, June (Croyle) Johnson?, Euphaime (Lamb) Miller, Marion Miller?, Oscar “Fritz” Powis, Laura (Johnson) Powis
Center, Left to right: Charles Miller and William Miller (twins, not sure who is who)
Front, Left to right: Alfred Powis, Louise Johnson?, Margaret Johnson?, Frank Johnson

As far as a date goes, Laura and Fritz were married in March of 1926, so I’d assume the Johnson family was over to visit on or around the time of their wedding. Dorothy Powis, their daughter, was born in December of 1926, and there’s no baby in the photo, nor does Laura look pregnant, so I’d have to pretty solidly put this in early to mid 1926. As far as my guesses go, I assumed June Johnson would be in the photo and she’s identified solely by process of elimination. I’d found another user’s photo of Euphaime Miller online, and the Miller twins appear over and over in other photos (my great grandma was clearly smitten with them and may have even taken this photo). I also guessed on Marion Miller since she’s standing near her mother and brothers. The two gals in the front are likely Laura’s two younger sisters, but it’s hard to tell who is who since they were born a year apart. The Millers are, as far as I can tell, not related at all, just neighbors.

A lot of the guesswork with the identifications takes into account the date and circumstances for the photo. Sometimes it’s easy to get frustrated when there are no labels and put a photo aside, but with a little critical thinking (Laura and Fritz were recently married, I know that’s Frank Johnson and the Miller Twins, so…) and a few lucky google/ancestry hits, things can be sorted out eventually. It definitely pays to revisit unidentified photos from time to time!

Sepia Saturday

Sepia Saturday 256: Festivals, floats, feathers, and fair maidens

By Sheetar 29 November 2014 29 November 2014

Another one from great grandma’s personal photo album. I’d posted about this little album a while ago and the issue that the photos are all glued to black construction paper-like pages. I had managed to free a few of the photos that were loose already and made a few new discoveries. Fitting in with the Sepia Saturday this week, I present to you a group of fair maidens.

On the back is written, â€œLeft to right, Anna Shranko, Goldie Powis, Helen Somerville, Kathleen Troland, and Mary Shranko. The Shranko sisters are from Osceola Mills, PA. Four Budds and one bloom from Williamsport, PA. Taken May 15, 1932â€ Junua “Goldie” Powis (nee Patchin) was my great grand uncle’s wife. Alfred Herbert Powis had died 6 years prior to this photo being taken and they only had one son who died in infancy. It’s sort of a sweet way to refer to Goldie as a, “bloom,” and the other girls who had never been married as, “budds.” I haven’t been able to find out much about the other girls, and I think maybe some of the names are spelled wrong. I did find an entry on the 1930 census that shows Helen, Kathleen, and Mary living in a house together in Williamsport, PA, with them all working a variety of different jobs from machine operator to saleslady and even laborer in a rubber factory. All the gals are dressed nicely for a lovely late spring day (see the tulips blooming in the foreground?). Again, I have to wonder who took the photo and took the time to label it as well with a date and all the names. And that’s that! Short and sweet this week, and a little late given that things have been pretty busy at Casa Sheetar. It’s still Saturday though, so I say it works!

Sepia Saturday

Sepia Saturday 255: Children, train sets, crafts, silhouettist, dogs, family groups

By Sheetar 22 November 2014 18 November 2014

For many of the prompt images for Sepia Saturday, I see the image and immediately think of a photo that fits. This one was a little more difficult. I have no artists like Eveline Maydell in my tree (that I know of) and no photos that jumped out at me as having the same feel. The one below kind of came close to the feel of the photo, even though mine is a perfectly posed family photo. It’s a bit of a departure from the prompt image, but it’s still Sepia and Saturday!

The image is just about an 8×10, mounted on heavy boad with the photographer’s studio name embossed in gold, “Lipp Studio,” in Philadelphia, PA. The studio doesn’t exist anymore, but even without that hint, my great grandma Olga labelled the photo, “Mother’s sister, husband, Maurice & Gordon, Shugg Family.” Bessie looked much the same throughout her life, so it’s been pretty easy to pick out photos that she’s in anyway, and this is no exception. Bessie Battin was born in Lawhitton, Cornwall, England in 1870. After marrying Arnold Shugg in 1900, she came to the US with her husband and two children in 1911, almost 20 years after her sister (my 2nd great grandmother Jessie) arrived. They settled in Philadelphia, PA about a 5 hour drive away from where Jessie and her family lived. The sisters appeared to have kept in close contact, exchanging photos over the years, and Jessie’s daughter Olga even visited Philadelphia to see Maurice Shugg and his wife, Mildred Pruden. Marurice (the older boy in the photo) and Mildred never had children, but Gordon (the younger boy) had a child, Mary, who married Joseph Delphidio. I don’t have a lot of information on the descendants of Bessie and Arnold, but I apparently have a few fourth cousins floating around somewhere, related via Bessie.

As for the book Bessie is holding, all I can make out is that it says, “Record,” on the front and is very well worn. As far as a date goes, Gordon was born in 1905, and they arrived in 1911, so something like 1915 sounds about right. If you happen to stumble across this photo and are related to the Shugg family, please get in touch!

Sepia Saturday

Sepia Saturday 254: Couples, Clinches, Crossings, Hitching a Ride

By Sheetar 15 November 2014 13 November 2014

This was as close as I could come to the prompt image for this week’s Sepia Saturday. A man helps a woman steady herself next to a waterfall! It doesn’t look like they were crossing the falls, maybe just standing near it for the photo, but it’s still a great image. We don’t know who this is for sure, but I have to assume it’s someone related via my husband’s paternal grandmother Hilje “Hilda” (Dijkema) Jaarsma. I have a hunch, based on another photo that’s labelled, that the woman may be one of her aunts (either Ellechien VanEerden or Gertrudia Dijkema Visser). It’s really hard to tell, and of course none of hte photos are labelled. No clues on the man though. I don’t think Ellechien was married, so it points to this more likely being Gertrudia, but then again I could be completely wrong on all accounts! It was likely taken in Holland, sometime around 1935. A quick search, and it looks a lot like the Sonsbeek Waterfall in Arnhem!

This appears to be the same man and woman as above. If you look closely, you can see the man is holding a walking stick behind his back, possibly the same one he had in the photo at the top. Again, I can’t verify anything about the photo, but hey, it’s a crossing, even if assisted by a bridge. I thought the bridge may have been unique enough to turn up in a google search, but I’d searched for it for a while and came up empty. Then, after stumbling across the image for the photo above, I found it’s a bridge in the same park (Park Sonsbeek) in Arnhem! So, now I’ve got the where, but still no who! Maybe if one of Wessel Visser’s relatives happens to stumble across this blog, they be able to confirm or disprove my theory. Wouldn’t that be great! So, yet another Sepia Saturday that brings me a new snippet of information through careful examination of old, unlabeled photos.

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.