Old Photos, Being a Trip Into the Past

I have been organizing old family photos, taking them from the 'magic stick' page albums and putting them into boxes. I plan to find some envelopes to protect individual photos. It is a real trip down memory lane. Plus I have photos from my husband's family as well. I upload pics to ancestry.com to preserve them. Here are some of my favorite family photos.

Barbara Reed Ramer

I was still a teenager when my Grandfather Ramer gave me this daguerreotype photograph. He was unsure if it was his mother or his grandmother, but I know from the dress style, and by comparing photo images, that it was his grandmother Barbara Reed Ramer. 













They lived in Milroy, PA where Joseph ran a lumber mill.

Their daughter Esther Mae was my Grampa Ramer's mother.

Lynne lost his mother and his grandmother when he was nine years old, and his grandfather had died before that. So he was taken in by his aunts and uncles. Gramps worked himself through college and seminary, then went into teaching. He fell in love with one of his students, a beautiful young blonde named Evelyn Adair Greenwood. They married when Evelyn was 17 and Lynne was 26.  

Evelyn's parents had come from England in 1911. Cropper Greenwood was born in Bacup, Lancashire and generations of his family all worked in the cotton mills. But Cropper worked in the quarry, where he apparently learned about engines. He became a chauffeur. He met Delia Victoria Smith, who was a domestic servant working in Manchester, England. Delia was from Irlam on Moss, her Irish father being a horse breeder; her mother was from Scotland. Below is Cropper Greenwood. He immigrated to America with a job working for 'a rich man' and sent passage for Delia to join him. They married the next month.

Evelyn and Lynne's oldest child was my mother, Joyce. Mom was the Jiggerbug Queen of the 'Projects', temporary war time housing for factory workers. Gramps worked as an engineer in an airplane factory during WWII.

Mom saw my dad on the bus and tried every way to get his attention. Well, she did and they married and a few years later I came along and then my brother.

Me at three years old

I grew up and married. Here is a photo of my mother-in-law when she was a teenager. She loved church camp at Gull Lake, MI and the summer this photo was taken she said she was 'dark as an Indian' and was asked by a Native American boy she met if she was an Indian.


Gary's father lost his father at age 13. His mother Loretta Valdora was a member of the UAW and supported the famous GM sit-down strike by bringing food to the striking workers.









Val/Etta/Girl (she went by many names over her life!) spent a winter at Vermillion Point, MI on Lake Superior taking care of the life saving station children.







Gary took this photo at Longwood Gardens outside of Philadelphia. It is such a beautiful photo because of the setting.