Old Photos, Old Memories

For the past few years I have been working on creating new albums for some of the old family photos. Some of these photos were handed down in our family, some were from an old album of our Mother's, some I even found on line, where they had been posted on Ancestry by other descendants of some of my ancestors.



A.G. "Red" McLaughlin, mid-1960s. He would have been in
his 50s. This is a pose very familiar to me.

Many of these photos were very small, had some flaws, or just needed a little brightening or other touch ups to bring out the picture more clearly. I scan these types of photos, work on them a little, and make prints for my new albums. I try to include as much information as I can about each photo, so this family history is preserved. Often dates are missing. Then I give it my best guess--and it has certainly taught me to date my own photos as I go along! I used to think I would always remember the occasions when I took photos; as I got older, I realized that I should have been dating things and I am careful to do that now.

When our Mother died, my eldest sister, Terry, undertook the job of going through Mother's collection of photos and separating out those that applied to each family (plus some that were more general) so that we each would have some of the originals. Others she scanned and has posted online so we each have access to them.

The two photos I am sharing today were in my packet of photos from Mother's albums. They were not dated, so by "internal evidence" my best guess is that these are from between 1964 and 1967. These two photos match in the type of paper they are printed on and other details, and I am sure they were taken the same day. If one of my sisters can date them more closely that would be great.

This was the companion photo to the one of Daddy. Obviously, we did not know we were being photographed. Mother (Rose) is about to take a sip of her coffee, Kathleen has her eyes down or closed, and I am gazing off to the side. But this photo helped in figuring out the approximate date of the pictures.