I was digging thru an old jewelry box over the weekend looking for a necklace and I came upon some old B&W negatives. Curiousity got the better of me, so I threw them on my scanner to take a better look. I almost fell off my chair to discover that one of the negatives was a photo of my grandfather, my dad, and five of his siblings! What makes this picture so special is that I have never seen a casual photo of my grandfather, who died before I was born.
My grandfather, seated around 1910.
The few photos I have were posed studio portraits taken when he was a young man, on The American Thread baseball team, and a family portrait with my grandmother and their twelve children. I don’t remember when I acquired the negative – I’m thinking it may have been floating around in a drawer at my parent’s house and I grabbed it, stashed it in an envelope, then promptly forgot about it.
My grandfather, seated second from the left.
I’ve done a lot of photo restorations and I decided to work on this photo, which was in sad shape. Over the weekend, I stole an hour here and there to fix it. After blowing the dust off of the negative, there were issues – it was faded and there were black specks everywhere. I had to do quite a bit of work in Photoshop preparing it for this post.
Scan of the original negative.
My grandfather came down from Quebec, settled in Connecticut, married and had twelve children. He was widowed in 1941, and raised the younger children with the help of my Aunt Vi – who was an amazing woman. It’s nice to get a sense of him from these few photographs, and wonderful to grow up in a family surrounded by twenty aunts and uncles!
OH MY GOD! I’ve never seen a picture of him! Look how cute Dad is. How long have you had these? Do you have any more? Do you know what year it was taken? Is that Aunt Agnes next to Dad? Do you think Sister’s coat was borrowed from Aunt Vi? I have lots of questions…
I know, he smoked cigars – who knew? I’ve had them for at least ten years. There’s another with Uncle Walter, Aunt Adele, Carol, and Sister Bernadette – but the negative has a lot of damage and it would be a major undertaking to correct it. Maybe I’ll scan it and work on it here and there.
As for the date I originally thought late 40s – only because Sister went into the convent at 15 and she’s wearing street clothes – but that would make Dad 14 and Aunt Ann Marie (standing next to Dad) 12 – and that can’t be because she’s wearing lipstick. Also, Pepe died in 1954 – so it has to be the early 50s. It remains a mystery as to why Sister isn’t wearing a habit.
I thought she went in at 17. I think Dad is older than 14 in the picture, maybe 16 or 17, which would make Aunt Ann Marie (I realized it was her after I asked) a teenager. Might be the early 50s which explains the lipstick. Ask Dad, he seems to remember dates and ages. I wonder if he has any more of these, I’d love to see them.
He may if he didn’t pull a Feng Shui. * snorts *
You mean a feng shred?
Yeah, something like that.