Snapshot - Summer of 1932

The car, grandmother’s dropped waist dress and hairstyle suggest a picture taken in the late 1920’s. Her sister Elsie’s dress style, finger wave bob, and more importantly, the little guy holding each of their hands, my dad, firmly dates the picture as summer or early fall 1932. This post written for the 10th edition of Smile for the Camera: Costume at Shades of the Departed.

© 8 February 2009, Desktop Genealogist Unplugged, Teresa L. Snyder 

Genea-bloggers Galore!

Wow! When Jasia’s Carnival of Genealogy came to town last week, there were a whopping 39 entries. A Carousel Edition, many of the entries were from newbies to the Carnival.

If that weren’t enough, when the footnoteMaven published this month’s Smile for the Camera Carnival, she had 40 participants who wrestled with the problem of picking their favorite photo. 

Again, there were first time Carnival participants. Kudos to both ladies for giving a forum to genea-bloggers and family historians across the Internet! Thanks for all your hard work!

© 14  August 2008, Desktop Genealogist Unplugged, Teresa L. Snyder 

Stories My Grandmother Told Me

Though my writing and speech tends to be littered with superlatives – the greatest, the most, the best – the truth is, I’m much too wishy-washy to say definitively that I have a favorite of anything. So, when the glorious fM proposed “My Favorite Photograph” as the subject for this edition of “Smile for the Camera,” I admit to a slight, panic-stricken feeling at committing to a favorite photograph so publicly. I mean, won’t the other photographs be hurt? So after careful consideration, I came up with the winner. If it isn’t my favorite photograph, it is certainly one of my favorites.

 

In my family, old pictures are few and far between. The one I’ve chosen was taken in 1899 at a photography studio in Tiffin, Ohio. It is a picture of my grandmother, Katheryne Cecile Lynch and her twin sister, Elizabeth Lucille Lynch. Katheryne and Elizabeth, born October 4, 1898, were the youngest children of Laura Jane Feasel Lynch and John Perry Lynch. Laura Jane and JP appear not to have been sentimental when it came to naming most of their children. The other children – Flossie, Owen, Elbert, Hazel Grace, and Harry Victor, were not named after family members.

 

But perhaps because they had lost little Hazel Grace at age 3 or maybe it was the unexpected delight at the birth of twin daughters eight years later, Laura Jane and JP decided it was time to give their daughters family names. My grandmother, Katie was named for her paternal grandmother, Catherine Good Lynch while Elizabeth was named for her maternal grandmother, Elizabeth Armstrong Feasel. Eighteen ninety-nine appears to be the year that they set out for Greer County, Oklahoma. JP’s parents had settled there more than a decade earlier when Greer County was still considered a part of Texas. According to my grandmother they traveled by covered wagon, and she swore as little as she was she had memories of crossing the Red River.

 

Somewhere, during this time, and it may have been here in Ohio (though I have found no record of it), little Elizabeth contracted measles and died on July 7, 1899. She was nine months old. My grandmother is the one sitting on the left hand side of the picture, with Elizabeth to her right. It is possibly the only picture taken of the two girls.

 

My grandmother passed away on March 25, 1990. She outlived her twin by more than ninety years.

  Information Sources: 

1. Digital Image of PJ Keller Photograph taken Tiffin, Ohio, 1899, supplied by Phyllis Sloan 

2 .Photographic Images of leaves of George Washington Lynch Family Bible supplied by Anna Belle Lynch Mauldin 

3. Information about Greer County supplied by Dee O’Hara AND 

4. Greer County, OK GenWeb, http://www.okgenweb.org/~okgreer/ 

5. Personal conversations with Katheryne Lynch Hoy Runion

© 27 June 2008, Desktop Genealogist Unplugged, Teresa L. Snyder 

To The Aid of Fellow Procrastinators

Okay, let’s be honest. You’re reading this post because you’re putting off doing something you know you SHOULD be doing, but just don’t feel like settling into doing it quite yet. That’s cool. I’m always happy to oblige a fellow procrastinator. 

If you’re looking for some quality material to procrastinate over, might I suggest you go over to the blog, Shades of the Departed and check out the 3rd edition of “Smile for the Camera.” 

There are twenty contributors writing on the topic, A Celebration of Home. 

If the boss catches you reading them, just tell him you’re doing research. No, I’m not going to tell you how to correlate the Celebration of Home posts with your particular job. You’ll figure something out. You are, after all, a smart one aren’t you? I mean you are reading this post – case closed. 

Until Next Yadda Yadda Yadda ...

© 14 July 2008, Desktop Genealogist Unplugged, Teresa L. Snyder 

Memories of a Childhood Home

When I dream of home, the place my sleeping mind takes me is to the gray shingled house where I lived from the age of two until a few months before my eleventh birthday. The house, built by my Uncle Boo, was a wonderful cozy place that we outgrew with the arrival of my baby brother. Our house was one of the first built on the street, and there were no sidewalks.

For a number of years, a large tree at the corner served as a mail drop, with a variety of mailboxes nailed to its trunk. At the time, it seemed perfectly natural to walk down to the end of the street and get your mail off of a tree. In retrospect, it was a very peculiar arrangement, which today, would probably cause a public out cry and qualify as a crime against nature. 

The one end of the street sat at a higher elevation than the other end of the street, so that it felt like you were walking down a small slope as you progressed down the road. The houses on the opposite side of the road, all had retaining walls in the middle of their backyards, which were handy for jumping off and playing war, unless of course a mom happened to be looking out the back window, admonishing you NOT to jump.

I don’t have in my possession a very good picture of the house itself. Below is a picture that shows the side of our house with the back door, as well as yours truly with my long nose accentuated by mother’s insistence on short, short bangs. My mother and I were constantly at war about the length of my bangs throughout my childhood. I guess we can see by this picture, which one of us was right!

 

Besides my middle sister as a playmate, the neighborhood “gang” consisted of my friend Debbie and her brother Ronnie, Diane and her brother Jerry, Susie and sometimes, when he deigned to grace us with his presence, Susie’s brother Chris, Mary Ellen, and once in awhile, Pony Tail who lived at the farthest end of the street. Other kids from nearby neighborhoods would also play with us, but this was the core group.

Debbie was the one who taught me how to make the sign of the cross, when she was going through catechism classes. Of course, being a Lutheran, my mother frowned upon showing off this new talent when I went to our church the next time. When I found out by accident, that not only did she get to make the sign of the cross, and have a cool set of rosary beads, but that a quick confession absolved Deb for all that particular week’s sins, I was all like – sign me up! 

And what particular sins could a child under ten have that would make the idea of confession sound good? Well, for one, there was a game we played that involved throwing your flip flops at bees who were minding there own business in the clover, and then running like heck, squealing if the bee chased after you. Of course, one bee got revenge for all, when I was running in my front yard one day, and ran out of my flip-flop, stepping squarely on one of those fine creatures. He rewarded me by jabbing his stinger into my instep. I gave bees a wide berth after that.

Another time, instead of playing hide and seek with my friends, as I desperately wanted to do, my mother made me keep an eye on my baby brother and my two-year old sister, while she went inside to start lunch or maybe dinner. My youngest sister was painting on a large piece of paper on the sidewalk, when I looked away, craning my neck to see what my friends were doing across the street. I don’t think I looked away that long, but it was long enough for sis to get bored with the paper, and decide that using my brother’s face for a canvas was a much better idea. When I looked back, there my brother was with big black circles painted around both eyes. He never let out a peep. Was it my fault he was born with bad reflexes? 

In my memory, summers lasted forever, and the days were filled with kick ball games, running through the sprinkler, communal reading of comic books, and plays performed and written by those of us in the neighborhood. It was a great place to spend a childhood, and there are many nights where I am back in that neighborhood, with those friends and that house – even if it is only in my dreams. 

Until Next Time! 

This post written for “Smile for the Camera’s” 3rd edition – a celebration of home.

© 10 July 2008, Desktop Genealogist Unplugged, Teresa L. Snyder 

What's better than a carnival coming to town - two carnivals!

The Carnival of Genealogy has been posted by Jasia at Creative Gene . This edition's topic was, "Mom, how'd you get so smart?" A pretty fitting topic considering last week's special holiday. 

Jasia, bless her heart (does using that phrase make me an honorary Southerner?), let people know that I now have an RSS feed. Thanks, lady! 

A carnival that posted last week on Mother's Day was my friend Footnote Maven's Smile For The Camera - A Carnival of Images on her new blog, Shades of the Departed. The blog was inspired by FM's own collection of vintage photographs. For those of us who love old photograph's this blog is a special treat. Mosey on over, and check it out! 

Until Next Time - Happy Ancestral Digging!

© 18 May 2008, Desktop Genealogist Unplugged, Teresa L. Snyder