Showing posts with label rich family home. Show all posts
Showing posts with label rich family home. Show all posts

3/27/13

The GHOSTLY PIANO PLAYER in the Little Family Album


The final image in the little album which once belonged to Gertrude Helen Rich Bowen.

A near ghostly figure playing the piano while the photo of the patriarch of the family looks down from above. I don't know if this is Gertrude or Frances, but this is the end of this visual story. There are no more.

3/26/13

The GHOSTS IN THE LITTLE FAMILY ALBUM: Beau or Brother?


There's no information about this fellow. His photos is on a page with the various photos of women in hats. Gertrude married a man with the last name of Bowen, so perhaps this is him.

3/25/13

The GHOSTS IN THE LITTLE FAMILY ALBUM: Gertrude with Friend?


Is the woman on the left Gertrude? Seems plausible, but we'll never know for sure. As to the woman on the right...well she just looks so much like my friend that I'll have to talk to her about possible time traveling that she never mentioned.

3/24/13

The GHOSTS IN THE LITTLE FAMILY ALBUM: Gertrude with Mother


If you look at the very first post of this series you'll see an elderly woman seated in the foreground. I'm guessing that was mother Rich. I believe Gertrude stands behind the woman with the tie on. If this is indeed the case, we then have Gertrude with her mother in this photograph.


Click on image to see it larger.

3/23/13

The GHOSTS IN THE LITTLE FAMILY ALBUM: Frances Rich Cheney and Friend


Frances (Rich) Cheney is the woman on the right. I don't know if she was a sister or an aunt to Gertrude.


Click on image to see it larger.

A couple of fine hats. Imagine the boxes they kept them in. I mean, you'd need something to store it in because you certainly don't want to have to dust these things or try to get spiders out of the folds in the bows. I know, spiders on the heads...could have gone all day without saying that.

Click in the labels section for "Frances" see photos of her on her homestead.

Only four images left to see from this little family album.

3/22/13

The GHOSTS IN THE LITTLE FAMILY ALBUM: The Ladies


Oh to be out and about with these ladies on a glorious Spring day, having lunch, getting their photo taken, and then parading in their fine hats. I could use a day like that after dealing with computer problems for days. It's amazing how one little non-virus piece of errant software can do so much damage to one person's life. These ladies could never even imagine what we have at our fingertips today, nor the stress these things can cause.



I will imagine myself in the photo and how the rest of the day would unfold. I'm time traveling as I write this.

3/19/13

The GHOSTS IN THE LITTLE FAMILY ALBUM: Another House


No information about this house.


Click on image to see it larger.




Click on image to see it larger.

I'm wondering if this is one of those occasions when the little one story structure on the right was built first when they claimed their land; with the two story structure a later addition.

What I'd really like to know is if the house is still standing in Nebraska.

3/18/13

The GHOSTS IN THE LITTLE FAMILY ALBUM: Gertrude


Most of the images I have of Gertrude are when she was middle-aged or elderly, so this was a joy to find. When I scanned this very faded image I had no idea it was her. Working with it in Photoshop it was almost like watching an image appear in a developing tray. Slowly as I applied image adjustments I began to see her face. It's nice to see her in her youth.

3/15/13

The GHOSTS IN THE LITTLE FAMILY ALBUM: Men


This weeks Sepia Saturday photo was taken at the Potsdam Conference in 1945. These were the men, the small group of men, who made decisions that would affect the lives of the rest of the world. This is as it always will be. There will always be one group in control while the rest of us get on with our lives.

The photos below were taken long before the Potsdam Conference. These photos were taken long before World War I. But these men, their lives, were still shaped by what happened far from their prairie homes. The decisions made by the ruling class had consequences which directly affected them.




Click on either image to see it larger.

Two men from Nebraska, their photos faded to being merely ghost images, are long forgotten, just as what happened at Potsdam is forgotten. And yet these men are just as much part of our history as the small group of men who made the decisions for the world. All of them gone now, all of them ghosts from the past. But only a handful of men made an indelible mark that the rest of the world remembers. These Nebraska farmers had a much smaller sphere of influence and may not be remembered by anyone.

This week I have I have been featuring photos from an old album that once belonged to Gertrude Helen Rich Bowen. Perhaps you remember past posts about Gertrude the schoolteacher from Nebraska. If not you can see other posts that featured Gertrude by clicking on her name in the labels section.

To see the other posts from the album:

the Rich family, a photo so faded that I had no idea there were so many people in it until I brought it back to life,

the family home on the Nebraska prairie,

the barn with the work horses,

and the children of the prairie.

Over the coming days there will be more images from this album.

3/14/13

The GHOSTS IN THE LITTLE FAMILY ALBUM: The Children


These little fellows are lost to history, but fortunately their images were not lost through time. This photo was one of the few images that wasn't merely a ghost of its former self.

Life on a Nebraska prairie had to be beautiful, lonely, exciting, and heartbreaking.


Click on image to see it larger.

Does anybody have an idea what the structure in the background might be? I'm guessing it had something to do with hay.

Let's take a moment to wonder what these little fellows might have been looking at. Take a look at this image at National Geographic of a prairie with a rainbow.

3/13/13

The GHOSTS IN THE LITTLE FAMILY ALBUM: The Work Horses


The family work horses with the house off in the distance. On a snowy cold Nebraska morning that would be a real trudge through the snow to get to the barn.





3/12/13

The GHOSTS IN THE LITTLE FAMILY ALBUM: The Rich Home


I have no proof, but I believe this was the Rich family home in Nebraska. This may be where Gertrude Helen Rich (Bowen) grew up. I love the round upstairs window. You will see it again tomorrow when you see the barn.

Imagine standing at that window as a storm blows across the Nebraska plains in the winter. The highest point around from which you can see the horizon and more of the same. How many people simply went mad staring off into the distance which never seemed to end? How many found poetry in their souls for what they were seeing?


Click on image to see it larger.

And in the summertime what were evenings like sitting on the porch? From a distance it would have been seen as lights at different levels breaking up the unending horizon.