Friday, January 18, 2013

Watch Your Back

This week's Sepia Saturday prompt is a tough one. There is so much going on in the prompt photo that it was really hard to choose what theme, and consequently which old photo, to use. I finally chose the "interesting happenings in the background" theme.

This is an old postcard that has been in our family for nearly a century. The center man staring at the camera is my great-grandfather Harry Jackson. He was a Railroad Fireman and Locomotive Engineer for the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad from before 1908 to 1941. Nothing was ever written on the postcard and it is undated, but I would hazard a guess that it was taken in the 1920s. Everyone in the family has always been so fascinated that one of our relatives was pictured on a postcard that we never even noticed that they were standing in front of a train wreck!


We just focused so hard on Harry and vaguely registered the fact that there was a train in the background. We assumed he was at the train yard where he worked and the photographer came by to sell picture postcards. None of us ever took a close look at the background until recently.  I am astonished at how unobservant my family is!



Check out the Sepia Saturday blog to see how others interpreted the theme. I promise you will be entertained!



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Sunday, January 13, 2013

Bathing Beauties of Yesteryear

My, it's been such a long time since my last blog post! I am thoroughly ashamed of myself! But this is a new year and I have resolved to post on a regular basis, at least once a month if not more often.

I found myself surfing over to the Sepia Saturday website this evening and saw that yesterday's prompt was what looks like a 1950s photo of a woman sitting at the beach. That reminded me of several family photos I have of bathing beauties in the early 1920s.

The darling girl standing with the pointed toe in the picture below is my grandmother Dorothy with her sisters Signa and Lillian and her mother, my great-grandmother, Frances. This was probably Nantasket Beach, Massachusetts taken about 1921.


This photo must have been taken around the same time...it is of my great-grandmother Frances and she is wearing the same bathing suit as the one above. It was also probably at Nantasket Beach in Massachusetts since that was a favorite bathing spot for the family in the early 20th century.

This next photo is Frances' sister Jennie around the late 1910s/early 1920s. This must be in cooler weather because nobody is wearing a bathing suit.
If you want to see more bathing beauties, and a few bathing hunks, from days gone by, visit my blog post Swimsuit Edition (uh, Sports Center Saturday?) from October 2011.

Sepia Saturday is a weekly meme which encourages bloggers to publish and share old images and photographs. Visit their blog for other stories and vintage photos with the theme of the week.



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