Photo Friday :: Out Front

This series was birthed from the large old photo album I rediscovered in the back of my closet. Many of the photos are from my grandmother's side of the family. There are also unknown photos that came with the album. Story goes my dad, an avid garage saler, picked up a celluloid covered Victorian era photo album on one of his scavenges. It already contained photos of an (as yet) unidentified family. My parents put our own vintage family photos in the album alongside the mystery family's.  As children we marveled at the old fashioned clothing and settings, often wondering who these people were and what their lives were like. Of course, we thought that ALL the people in the photos were our relations! It wasn't until my mom passed the album on to me after my dad died that I learned of the mystery family residing alongside our own!

I plan to share these photos over time, sometimes they will be my family, and identifiable, others will be of the mystery family. Thanks to the world wide web, they may find their way home yet!

Enjoy!

A mystery photo!
A picture postcard with nothing written on the back.
I suspect this is the Irons family of Chicago Illinois.

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Five Photos ~ Five Weekends: #2: The Family Reunion

This is the entire Irons clan of Chicago, IL. You met Charlie last week. He's the one front and center with the cigar in his hand. The baby is my grandmother Agnes Irons. This dates from late 1903 I suspect. The matriarch of the family, Agnes Irons, has just about had it with the girls. Or maybe just one in particular. 

What just happened?

Someone's got some 'splainin' to do! 

Everyone else is either used to this behavior (oh boy, here we go again!), or very uncomfortable it is happening (stand very still and she might not notice me).

Good times!

A picture really is worth a thousand words, or a thousand thoughts, in this case.

Man, I really wish I knew what just happened. I could write so many different dialogues for the players of this one frame play. The longer I look at it the better the story becomes.

I do know that this was a family reunion of some sort. Agnes' daughter Christine and family were back in Chicago for a visit, having moved to Montana 15 years earlier. 

Someone didn't approve of something?

We've all had family moments like this - I'm just tickled that this moment was caught for all of time - and that the photo somehow survived over a century to be discovered and loved by me.