Sunday, December 11, 2005

Great Grandparents

Mabel Reesey, 1921 Thomas Walker Mabel Reesey, 1921

I spent a lot of the day with Monee yesterday, and one of the things we did was to look through some of her old photos of her parents in the 1920s and '30s. I scanned a few of my favorites, which you can see on the Flickr photos above. The two of my great grandmother Mabel Reesey Walker Herdman in particular fascinate me. There's something a little mysterious and impish about her face that I love. You can tell that in spite off the old-fashioned formality of the pictures, she's still got some zing in her. I'm not sure why I like the picture of my great grandfather, Thomas Walker, so much, especially since you can't even see his face very well. But I like it nonetheless.

Mabel and Tom both kept diaries during the time of their (secret) courtship and subsequent elopement, and we've got transcripts of them both written out with each person's entry from each day side by side, along with Mabel's commentary on it from a taped interview with my uncle Paul years later. Fascinating stuff. It's really making me want to get more into the family history and dig up old stories and photos and things to share, like uncle Jim does on the Waldon side.

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