Sunday, August 3, 2014

Great-grandma was a mischief maker


If the proverb "A girl unemployed is thinking of mischief" is true, then my great-grandmother Frances (Bye) Jackson had way too much time on her hands. I have lots of photos with her being mischievous. Here are some of my favorites.

This is probably where Frances got started with her funky photos. She is the young girl pulling the cart. Her mother, my 2xgreat-grandmother Julianna Bye is "driving". The young boy is Frances' nephew, Julian Tvedt. This photo is taken around 1900, most likely in Kennebunk, Maine.

  
Frances also kept up with the current fashions. This photo of her wearing knickers must have been quite scandalous at the time. Then she promptly turned around and grabbed her ankles to get a perfect shot of her bum. Obviously, the devil made her do it.



She must have gotten the idea for this one from her mother (see the first photo above). Frances is the one with the tire around her neck. 


Her playful nature continued into her golden years. Here she is riding her grand-daughter's bike, pretending to race their old dog. She was at least 60 years old in this photo. She wrote on the back "Just me, but I won the race."


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11 comments:

  1. A fabulous group of photos - she certainly had a sense of humour that shines down through the ages.

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  2. Best laugh of the morning. I bet she was a lot of fun.

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  3. The two ‘knicker- pictures’ are priceless. What a fun lady she must have been.

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  4. I love these! I'm sure you have tons of great stories and photos about her - she seems like quite the character.

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  5. How lovely to be descended from such a fun-filled, free-spirited character. Did she pass along some of those wonderful genes to you?

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  6. She certainly looks as though she enjoyed life to the full and could laugh at herself too.

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  7. I don't seem able to reply to individual comments so I will just post a general comment. Thank you to everyone for your kind comments. Unfortunately, I never met her in person but my mom and her sisters often talk about how fun she was. She came from a talented family of musicians, actors, and artists. None of those qualities were passed down to my mom's generation nor mine. However, my daughter has ALL those talents. It must have skipped 3 generations to land on her.

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    1. Lovely to have those photos showing your talented and mischievous great grandma having fun, rather than just posing formally as we see in most photos of that past generation. Strange that you can't reply individually, as I have just posted this reply to your last comment.

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    2. After I posted my comment, I went to my Dashboard and clicked a few buttons and suddenly the Reply link reappeared. But don't ask me what I did to fix it, I have no idea. I think maybe it had something to do with the fact that the comments were a pop-up window and now they aren't. Whatever the case, I will try to reply individually in future. ;)

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