Twelve Favorite Family Photos

I think family photos are most fun when you can get a little information about them, so I've included that for these 12 favorite family photographs.  I won't be offended if you just scroll down to look at the photos and don't read the captions (which are under the photos), but you're welcome to stop and read if a photograph interests you.

I cannot remember seeing my grandfather, "Bob" Meinzen, smile.  He was a very serious man, older when  knew him than in this photo, probably with worries and concerns that children aren't aware of.  Here he is looking, for all the world, joyful!  He is with his youngest daughter, Polly, and his adorable granddaughter, Dolly.  What a happy photograph!

I love this photo of the Bartley family home and all the details it includes.  It looks like a family reunion, of sorts and was my first introduction to that family line.  It is the home of my father's maternal great-grandfather Dixon Bartley of Bruin, Pennsylvania.  This photo was taken with his descendants some years after his death.

My grandfather, the same one who is smiling in the first photo, stands on the left.  He was a barber in Steubenville, Ohio, for a number of years in the early 1910s.  I have no history of this photograph but wonder if the man next to him is his sister Hannah's husband holding one of their daughters, either Edna or Zerelda.

The littlest of the girls, the one at center front with her arms back ready to send a splash toward the others, is a spunky one, not willing to take the splashes without sending some back.  I think of her as the water sprite and I laugh every time I look at this photo.  To the best of my mother's memory, this is a group of Meinzen cousins in Steubenville, sometime in the early to mid-1920s.

Full of himself, I'd say!  My father as a young man, perhaps in his late teens or very early 20s.  They tell me he had a great sense of humor.  He grew up on a farm and helped with the work from an early age.  Both his father and grandfather smoked a pipe.

Mary Thompson Bickerstaff, my great-grandmother, had nine children, four daughters and five sons.  One daughter died in infancy.  These are the other daughters, from left Mary Ellen/Mame, Mary Thompson Bickerstaff, Cora, and Emma, my maternal grandmother.  I knew all of the daughters.

Like mother, like daughter.  This is Elvira Bartley Gerner and her daughter Mabel.  Elvira's father was Dixon Bartley whose home is in a photo, above.  I find this photo positively charming.  Both stand in work clothes, taking a break.  But it's the pose I most love, with heads tilted to the right.

This informal family photo was probably taken around the time I was two.  There I am on my mother's lap with my brother on the left and my sister sitting on the floor in front of my father, his arms resting on her shoulders.

My aunt believes these photos of my paternal grandfather, Gust Doyle, were taken about 1904 when he was about 14, at a small photo booth at the county fair where the photographer had a selection of hats the subjects could choose to wear.  The originals are tiny, each image about an inch square.  Isn't he a good looking young man?

This is another photograph that makes me laugh.  Oldest to youngest, these three sisters are my mom Audrey, Geraldine/Jerree, and Doris Jean/Dot.  It appears to me that Jerree has been charged with helping Dot stay still for the photo, but she doesn't have a gentle touch and holds Dot's head against her stomach.  There!  Take the photo so we can get on with our play.

I love this farm photo of the barn and fields in Stoneboro, Pennsylvania, where three generations of my Doyle family lived, raised cows, farmed, and mined coal.  The barn had been in disuse for several decades when I took this photo and was torn down a few years later.  It was once a beautiful, strong barn.  If barns could talk, what stories might it have told?

This is the happiest photo I have of my parents, Lee and Audrey (Meinzen) Doyle.  By the time I was born, they were incredibly serious about life and there were few smiles and little laughter.  It's fun to imagine that there once was joy in their lives.

So those are a dozen of my favorite photographs.

This post was written for Amy Johnson Crow's 2019 version of 52 Ancestors.  The post topic for the week was "12."

--Nancy.

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