Saturday's Old Photo

I mentioned earlier this week that I’d had a couple of interesting visitors to my old blog. Yes, this week I received  emails from a couple of previously unknown (to me) cousins, Cliff and Ken Melvin, who happened across the photo of my grandfather’s family that I posted back in January. Cliff Melvin is the son of my grandpa’s sister Virgie, who is sitting down in front next to her brother George.

 
Here’s what I wrote about the photo back when I first posted it: 

My grandpa, Ira Deckard, is on the far right, next to his mother, Mary Hepsibeth Deckard … and then his father, John Wesley Deckard. The rest of the group are my grandpa’s sisters and brother: Virgie and George in the front, with Effie, Ethel and Rosie in the back. I’m guessing, by the age my grandpa looks, that this photo was taken sometime in the 1930s. The family is standing in front of my great-grandparent’s home in rural Missouri.

 I learned a little more about the photo from Ken Melvin:

The picture was taken in Grovesprings, MO - early 50s?- shortly before your great grand father died. John Wesley was known as Bud and his wife as Hep.

I was wrong about the date of the photo, then. That means that not only was this picture taken taken shortly before my great grandfather died, it was taken only a few years before my grandpa Ira passed away in 1955. Bud and Hep, they were. I’m glad to know that, too.

The photo on the left is of my grandpa Ira Deckard alone. My mother’s label on the back says she thinks this was also snapped in Missouri. He was, I think, quite a bit younger in this photo than he was in the photo above. If you click for the larger view, you’ll see that Grandpa Ira is wearing long johns under his overalls, and that he has the same piano fingers that my mother inherited and passed down to my oldest daughter and my youngest son. Do you suppose any long lost cousins have piano fingers, too? 

One of the bonuses of blogging: You never know what you’ll learn or who you’ll meet. 

Update on Thursday, May 3, 2007 at 8:29AM by rebecca

A little more information from Ken Melvin:  The year is more likely 1946 or 1947, and the one my mother identified as Effie is really Lena.