An Invitation

This is 1 of my all time favorite pictures of the "Ancestors". So who are they?

The woman seated in front is my Great Grandmother Louisa South Hart (who had married Robert Nelson Hart). Seated at her left is her Father, Isaac South. The woman standing on the left in the background is Mary South Hart, who was sister to Louisa and daughter of Isaac. Isaac and his wife Catherine had 3 daughters. [One had passed earlier. They had 2 sons, both of whom had gone to Colorado with the opening of the Railroad.]

The woman standing on the right is Hattie Louella (our beloved Aunt Lula) Myers Hart who was Louisa's daughter in law and had married her son Jesse. Lula and Jesse's 2 daughters are the children in the photo. Cecil is at the extreme right of the picture. Cecil was a "century baby", being born in 1900. The little one in the center front is Freeda who was born in [1909].

The only 2 in the picture that I ever knew were Aunt Lula, whom I knew well, and her daughter Cecil, whom I knew only remotely. All the others had passed before I was born.

The date of the photo is presumed to be sometime about 1912. Isaac's wife Catherine Powell died in 1910 and he died in 1912. Judging from the sizes of the children, Cecil would surely be about 12 and Freeda would be about 2-3.

And why, Dear Reader, do I love this picture? 1st, I love it because of the wonderful relaxed looks of Isaac and Louisa. They are not stuffy nor are they exhibiting those "deer in the headlights looks" so common in earlier photos. They just simply look happy to be there, happy to be alive. That is my interpretation of course.

And 2nd, to me, this picture which is a copy represents the very tangible connections between those Ancestors and me, and those Ancestors and a whole host of descendants that I know and don't know.

In their passing, the photos were divided and passed on with their other tangible holdings as is customary. It is likely that my Family has photos that others, who are our relatives, have never seen. It is likely that my Family has stories that others have never heard. After all these years, our Family Story is not complete until we begin to gather and share.

I shared this with Aunt Lu's Grandson and his Wife, Robert (Aunt Lu always called him "Bobby") and Carolyn Lindquist. They had never seen this photo, and Freeda was Bobby's Mother. Now doesn't that just make you want to get out there and share the very limited collection that we have? It does for me. Bobby and Carolyn also shared a photo of Aunt Lu as a child with her family in front of her home. I had never seen that picture either.

I suppose you could call this an invitation. How beautiful is that?
~~~
Note: The brackets [] indicate information that I need to dig more on to clarify and get more specific.