Fading Photographs

I have an uncle who spends hours reviewing and organizing hundreds of old family pictures ranging from three years to one hundred years ago.  One might say he is a bit compulsive, but I understand the lure. It’s probably not a bad thing that I have other responsibilities to keep me distracted from pouring over the hundreds of old photos I’ve seem now to have accumulated. I waited a bit too long though going through the family photos. Some of the pictures are too old. They may strike a memory for our aging family members, but not necessarily a name.

I don't often see these pictures at garage sales - estate sales or auctions maybe, but definitely in many of the shops around town that sell antiques and collectibles. I asked at one of these stores and the owner said that old portraits, even with beat up frames, sell real well. He had a picture of a woman on one wall and a picture of her son on another. He didn’t feel it obligatory to sell them as a set. He seemed indifferent to the relationship. I personally enjoy looking at old portraits trying to imagine that person’s life in a time long gone. My dad says I’m a relentless romantic. I’ll accept that.

This set of pictures came from my parent’s attic. Sadie, leading off, is the beautiful mother of the three others; Melba, Gail and Helen. As a mother myself, there is a universal connection....

Sadie was a feisty woman who in her and Theodore Roosevelt’s day (1904) felt compelled to write and deliver a speech insisting that women had as much right to be president as any man.

Melba was 5 when her mother was married. There’s a good possibility that this photo was taken as part of the wedding festivities. What an exciting day!

Lovely Gail at 23. She married and had a son and daughter but passed on at much too early an age. Such a heartbreaking time for a mother and family to go through.








Helen was in her mother's womb when her father died. Imagine the proud tears blinked back as mom watched Helen strike this charming, confident pose on her prom night.

I find these pictures simply enthralling!