vintage family photos

I've been meaning to post these for awhile, but September has gotten away from me in a major way. It feels like I spent most of the month in the hospital with Dad (he's home, finally; he's better, yay!), which is an exaggeration - it was only half the month. Now picking up projects that were dropped.

When my grandparents were in their last years, I would sit with them and look through old pictures, and try to label them. I recently got some of them out and have started scanning them. This first set came from my mother's mother's mother's family, in Lancaster County, PA. They are in their own group because whoever took the pictures wrote on the backs.

On the back of this is written, "Rather indistinct - a little too far from the camera." I'm trying to figure out what contraption is barely coming into frame on the right - a stroller? A bicycle? The woman under the tree must be a relative or friend of my great-grandmother's, approximately 1910-2.


On the back of this next one is written (in the same handwriting), "Do you know which one is yours truly? This was a crowd that went on a picnic one time." Doesn't the second woman from the left in the center row look like the same woman under the tree in the picture above?


This next one is a postcard, featuring a girl in a spectacular hat. On the back is written, "Sept. 28, 1911 - Dear cousin, please excuse this card how dirty it is but it has laid around so long. I wanted to send it but had forgot about [it]. This was take[n] on my birthday when I was 18 yrs. Sept. 2nd 1911. P.S. Excuse the date."


This last one is a formal portrait; another postcard. On the back are the initials "L.M.S." (my great-grandmother, who we called Nana) and the name "Ruby Stewart, 1912." I love many things about this portrait. I wish I knew who Ruby Stewart was - I'm guessing she was a friend of Nana's, who gave this to her.


I'll try to upload more in the days ahead. Nana was a spectacular photographer, especially when my grandmother was a baby, and I hope to archive and preserve the photos as best I can.