Friday, January 6, 2017

A Family Photo Rosetta Stone


Without an outright tell-all list to determine which subject is which in a family's album, the next best thing to have would be some sort of key to help identify each of the players—a "Rosetta Stone" for family photographs, if you will.

Given the lack of full names in this album I rescued from a local antique shop, at least there is one redeeming feature: the compiler provided one picture which included a specific family grouping.

Family group taken in the yard, Aug. 1936.

I suspect this to be the immediate family of the album's senders, Harry and Alice. We've already seen all of the people featured in this pose—well, at least almost everyone.

The two girls, undoubtedly, are Ruby and Iris, to whom we've been introduced in the notes from this photograph shown last week. The woman standing in between the two other adults may well be the same person as the one identified as "Grannie" in another photo we already reviewed. The gentleman standing at the far right and the woman positioned directly to the right of the girl standing are, I suspect, the "Harry and Alice" who sent the photo album as a gift to an undisclosed recipient eighty Christmases ago. If not Harry and that Alice, at least the "Harry and Self" we witnessed, heading off on the "spree" to Crosshaven.

So much for all the introductions to the two-legged subjects. We haven't yet, of course, made the acquaintance of their four-legged friend, but seeing such a subject in "the yard" gives us yet another clue about the place where these people were shooting their photographs.




8 comments:

  1. An insightful post! I had a Rosetta Stone photo but couldn't recognize which family it was--until a cousin gave me the names of two of the adults. Then we knew the rest were obviously their children and, crucially, her mother!

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    1. That's always a delightful discovery, isn't it, Marian? Crowdsourcing the answer counts as a favorite, too! How wonderful that you found the key to unlock the puzzle on that mother!

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  2. The yard looks quite muddy. I think you have the right cast of persons - Self is there... Not 100% on Alice.

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    1. Well...we'll keep working on that Alice situation!

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  3. I did something similar some time ago with some family photos. It is truly satisfying when the mystery starts to unwind. I added a link to your article in my Friday Finds at
    http://martinroe.com/blog/index.php/2017/01/06/friday-finds-week-1-2017/

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    1. Thanks, Martin! Appreciate your passing the word along. I enjoyed taking a look around your blog, as well.

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  4. Interesting...a bit more info would be great! :)

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