Featured Pre-Depression Family Farm Photos

What a heart breaking story! Did your grandparents use newspapers on the wall too? It helped a lot. In grade school, I lived on a former Southern plantation that had all it's outbuildings The field slave quarters, which had also been share croppers housing, was insulated with many layers of newspaper. I used to love to go down there and read the old ( 1930's) newspapers, and marvel at the ingenuity. As an artist, I have always been drawn to working with limitations, and I do challenges with it when I teach, too. I'm sure that drive was born from my admiration and reverence for what people like the sharecroppers who had once lived on our land and your grandparents did with next to nothing. I've always viewed it as a manifestation of optimism, so your characterization of your grandparents sounds right.

The house I was born in had a bay window and even though we moved when I was 4, I have very happy memories of that window. I'm the bald one.

 

In the theme of family and horses - These are all of my grandmother, who grew up at Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota. The one of her dressed in buckskins was for a pageant. She was born in 1892 and always rode astride unless she was in a long dress. Maybe even then.

 

Ooops - sorry - learning curve moment.
The bay window in the house I was born in.

 

Are the Poulsen's your family??? Interesting history.

http://thestormking.com/Sierra_Stories/Sandy_Poulsen/sandy_poulsen.html

 

No, but thanks for sending that - interesting to see the other half of the story. She owned it after my family, who never lived there. My mother died when I was a child, so I only know what I was told as a child and what I know about the family in general. I don't, for example, know if it was her dad ( who's name was Wagner) or her grandfather (Wyruck) who owned it. It's even possible it was lost in the depression of 1893 instead of the one in 1930. It would not have been my mother's paternal GF as her father ran away from home when he was 13 and never returned. Both had money - my ggf was a Jayhawker who killed - we have found documentation of an estimate of 13 people - and took their money - no idea how wealthy he was or if he had other or more legal, lucrative occupations. His name was never spelled the same way twice (wyrich, wyrick, etc) which was not uncommon in those days but could also have been deliberate and he may sometimes not have used his real name (he is last officially known to have escaped from jail just before a scheduled hanging). He was an older man, with a published reputation for being "so mean he frightned young children" when my grandmother was born, but I have never heard anyone in my family speak about him - what he was like as a family member. My grandfather Wagner joined the merchant marines after he ran away ( lied about his age), became a naval architect ( designed one of the lesser bridges over the San Francisco Bay) and became the first director of highways for the state of California. My grandmother (his wife, daughter of the Jayhawker) was very formal ( quite a contrast from my father's side of my family in my other photos). This photo was taken when she was 18 - the same age as the one of my paternal grandmother standing next to the horse, in a photo above - they came from very different worlds!