Save Family Photos

Sometimes, just a few words written on the back of photos reveal pieces of a heart. 💔

Over the weekend, I freed several photos from their magnetic album incarceration and began the process of researching the names and putting together pages for a new chapter of our family's history.

This 1900 photo is of "Uncle Dave", my great-granduncle-in-law¹, and his bride, Ida Malinda "Linnie" Myers. David was 25 when he and Linnie married. They had two children, Pearl and Claude.

David and Linnie moved a fair amount, going from Persia, Iowa, to Canada, Nebraska, and Kansas. David was a farmer through much of their lives, "retiring" from farming in 1920 and becoming a laborer in a Kansas City sawmill. By 1940 they had moved to California where Pearl and their grandson, James "Jimmie", lived.

As I researched the names on the finally-freed photos, I looked through a box of Howard family memorabilia to see if there was anything related to the photos in this album. In the box was a short stack of snapshots I had not been able to identify. Most have nothing written on the back, but three have notes written by the same hand, in the same blue ink.

"Linnie looks so natural in this picture. I was real thin, as you will observe. Jimmie has changed so much."

"I and Jimmie placed this little tree ... on Linnie's birthday Dec.20/44 ... and for Christmas too...Jimmie took the picture..."

"This was taken close up to show the reading...Jimmie and Linnie were real pals."

Linnie died March 23, 1944. Her grandson, Jimmie, was 10 years old.

Finding vital statistics provided the framework for David's story, but the notes add his heart. Just a few short sentences reveal his feelings of loss along with the love and connectedness that exists between grand-generations. ❤️

As "Mimi" to my just-turned-10 grandson, I understand this connectedness and can attest to the fact that there's nothing sweeter in all the world. ❤️

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