When I was young I often visited the homes of people who had family pictures plastered on the walls. You know what I’m talking about. You enter a house and you are immediately swamped with photographs crowding the wallpaper. Many homes proudly display contemporary family shots of kids smiling for their annual school pictures, Olan Mills family portraits, a few wedding pictures.
The photos I found most fascinating were the ones of people who likely had been dead for many years. Pictures of young men in uniform, frowning as if to show the world they are not frightened young boys hiding behind their crisp clothes. Wedding portraits, the ones where the brides are sitting down and the grooms are standing stoically, protectively above their new wives. Ancestral portraits from a time when, for reasons no one seems to know, it was forbidden to smile at a camera.
Being adopted when I was four years old, I did not grow up with these kinds of photographs of my own.
In my early adulthood, I sometimes visited antique stores that sold old photos. I used to buy them and hang them in my house, pictures of people long passed away. It gave me a sense of extension, continuity, a sort of linkage to the lifeline of the world that was lacking in my own life. I knew the lines was fake, and I never lied to anyone who visited my home. I didn’t care if the pictures were authentically mine. I made them mine in spirit, symbolising the many people who had come before me who I would never know.
My favorite picture in this group of faux family members is Aunt Lizzie. I know her name was Aunt Lizzie because she had written on the back of the picture, “From your Aunt Lizzie.”
Nearly ten years ago, in a series of serendipitous events, I had the fortune of traveling to Nebraska to visit newly discovered relatives. My great uncle Joe set me down at his kitchen table and went through five thick photo albums of our family members dating back to the late 1800’s. He allowed me to take as many as I chose to the office of his retirement home complex where, for five cents each, I was able to make Xerox copies of them.
My third cousin Evelyn took me to her basement and opened a huge trunk full of ancestral pictures and documents. “Take whatever you like home with you,” she said, “And just mail them back after you’ve scanned them onto your computer.”
I drove Uncle Joe to Texas to visit with his favorite nephew Ray, my dad’s twin brother, two weeks before Uncle Ray died of cancer. The night before we left Texas Uncle Ray’s son Kevin brought out four boxes of old family pictures. “Take whatever you like home with you,” he echoed Evelyn’s invitation. "And mail them back after you’ve scanned them onto your computer.”
And you may remember the enormous role that my second cousin Alec played in contributing to my collection of ancestral photographs.
Today, my walls are lined with pictures of these individuals with whom I share blood lines. Today I have in my home over two hundred fifty pictures of my family members dating back to the early nineteenth century.
I have heard the stories of many of these people long, long ago deceased.
My aunt Ruby Fisher was a highly respected, fiercely independent woman who, well before it was fashionable, divorced her first husband who mistreated her, and she later married a very loving gentleman.
My great-grandmother Flora Kellogg was very dedicated to her family but suffered from diabetes, and passed away in her 40's, only two years after welcoming my dad and his twin brother Ray into the world.
My great grandmother Laura Torney Yeager was a religious woman who loved her family and passionately enjoyed her flock of geese.
My great-great- grandmother Fannie Kellogg went to help one of her daughters whose baby had taken sick one evening. Fannie rocked the child all night, and in the morning the child's mother found her mother dead. Fanny's cold fingers were still clasped around the child, who was now sleeping and free of illness.
My great-great grandfather William Kellogg was one of the founding fathers of Hendley Nebraska.
My great-great grandfather John Torney joined the German Army and went to war when he was thirteen years old. He and my great-great grandmother immigrated to the United States in the 1860's. They homesteaded, prospered and raised a large family.
My great-great-great grandfather Almond Batchelor was forty years old when he mustered into the Union Army in 1862; he was killed in Tennessee eight months later. Just before he left for war he had a portrait taken of him and his wife Rachel.
Almond's son William Batchelor, my great-great grandfather, joined the Union Army after the death of his father and survived to be an old man.
The list goes on and on.
Without ever having met any of these members of my family, I know part of their stories. These stories, after a time, feel to me like memories, and I cherish them. They are part of the fabric of who I am. They are part of the story that is my life.
So is Aunt Lizzie!
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Comments
Thank you for this lovely post, timely for Memorial Day.
Rated with hugs and loved the pictures
I favor my own beloved grandmother, who is with me here on OS in great spirit.
But real people that you Look like, that's something, all right. I've had no luck getting my birth mother to communicate with me. Am unsure where to go from here. Have been considering contacting one of her many siblings, but think it might be somewhat Rude (midwesterners are a private bunch).
i dunno....
But thanks for your stories. They are heartening!
Now, you've gone and written this and I'm bawling my eyes out.
Lovely, lovely, lovely!
Rated.
Rated for general awesomeness.
you know me, Kit, i dearly love old photos, and the stories that go with them. i'm thinking some of these faces can be used when your book gets illustrated. whatchya think?
thanks for sharing the stories, real and imagined. I like aunt lizzie's face.
Linda - I appreciate your kindness - again.
Gabby - You know, it's funny - I've looked at that picture of GGrandma Fanny for years (it's one of the portraits hanging in my livingroom) - I never saw the resemblance! But I think you're right!
scanner - Yes, she was Uncle Joe and my grandmother's mother. She did have a difficult life. She also passed on the diabetes to her children - all of her children and well over half of her grandchildren died of diabetic complications, including my dad. I feel a special kinship to Flora.
Blu - Trust me - it has been a "labor" of love - it has enriched my life in ways I cannot adequately describe!
mypsyche - Well, some folks would call it pathetic, but those old nonfamily members' pictures gave me comfort. "Aunt Lizzie" "lives" up on my livingroom wall right in the midst of the "real" family. It amuses me beyond words that of all the pictures I included in this little essay she was chosen to be on the cover. And I adore her gentle face!
Pavanne - Thanks!
Fusun - Thank you for your kind words. The snippets of information I included on each of these ancestors are true. They are only snippets, bits of information completely out of context of their real lives, but I treasure them!
vanessa - I don't specifically write "for the cover," but it does please me to see Aunt Lizzie smiling there today - she held my hand through alot of years while I waited for the others to show up. It is fitting that of all the pictures in that article hers should be the one selected. I'm glad my little essay touched you!
Jonathan - Thanks!
Henry - You said a mouthful! Thanks so much for dropping by!
Lee - Yes, so many of them were so generous with me. It was very humbling. I have never experienced anything like this before in my life!
dianaani - You are so funny. Truly. But yeah, I love these old phots SO much. And as you and happy say, Aunt Lizzie - she truly looks like a kind soul!
vanessa - I love your story! Yeah, I reckon things would be different if you asked strangers to take their pictures, but what a beautiful gestures! And again, THANKS!
cindy - you're welcome! This is just the tip of the iceberg. LOL!
LadyDusk - Gosh, I hadn't thought of the notion of "inherited memories" - and I should have thought of that! What with being a Jungian based therapist, and all his talk of the collective unconscious. Thanks for pointing that out - I've got to think some more on that!
I feel deep envy. Two generations back in my family and we find a black mother and and Cherokee mother, so photo albums went sideways; then my mother walked away from all her children and all our belongings and we lost most of our visual family history. So I live vicariously through your piece, and you give me such riches here. Lizzie was someone's someone, so why not your aunt? Exceptional writing.
Greg - Your comment is such a gift to me! I'm glad in some way this family of people and portraits extends beyond blood lines and reaches to you. And yes - "Aunt Lizzie," because of what she has represented to me for all those years before I discovered the others, lives up on the wall surrounded by those who came to me later. Thank you so much for your kind and thoughtful comments!
I very nicely done, as usual. I enjoyed your perspective as to the inherited versus that which we choose. ~R+~