Reading family photographs
Paternal grandparents’ anniversary celebration. Davenport, Iowa. December 1962. Left to right: Front row: Terri Finch, Evie Stock, David Stock, Debbie Finch, Caroline Stock, Mildred Finch. Second row: Ron Stock, Denny Finch, Rose Stock, William Henry Stock, Augusta Stock, Henry Finch. Back row: Paul Stock, Will Stock, Eileen Stock.
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When this old family photograph popped up on my phone's daily "memories" feed, my first thought was, "Why had I never noticed before that my aunt Evie and cousin Caroline were wearing matching outfits?" Each wore a white short-sleeved blouse and a plaid skirt, not quite identical, but very nearly. And then I enlarged it to get a better look to see what else I had not noticed in all the other times I'd looked at that picture. And I thought about how there is so much information in a photograph--especially in a family photograph--that we never get it all in one go. We rarely see the same picture exactly the same way twice.
Currently, I am working on The Ancestor Project, a book of words and images about the families that brought me into the world. This last year I have focused my attention on my father's family, the people in this image among them. My research and writing gave new meaning to visual details in this picture that helped me connect their lives and mine.
My paternal grandparents, William Henry and Augusta Stock, are at the center of this group portrait. The others are sons and daughters and their spouses and children. They have gathered together to celebrate their anniversary. In a companion photograph, my grandparents are standing behind a table with Christmas-y decorations. They were married on December 6, 1916, so a holiday centerpiece would have been appropriate. There is no date on the back of the print; initially, I assumed this was their 50th anniversary. But, as I have been piecing together my grandparents’ story, I realized this could not have been their 50th. My grandfather died right before Thanksgiving in 1966, just a few weeks before their 50th anniversary. I later found other photographs of some of my cousins dated 1962, where they look to be about the same age as in this one, so I'm guessing this was my grandparents' 45th anniversary.
This gathering was in Daddy's hometown of Davenport, Iowa, and all the people in the picture were family members still living there. Included in this photo were his sister, Millie, his brothers, Paul and Will, and their spouses and children (see caption). The widow of his brother, Henry, was there as well, with her son. Henry died a hero in the Philippines near the end of WWII. My family was not there to help celebrate because we lived in Sarasota, Florida, at the time, too far to drive and too expensive for us to fly. Daddy's sister, Delores, and her husband and daughters in Phoenix, Arizona, also were too far away to make the trip.
Another detail I first saw the other day was that my grandmother and aunts were wearing corsages, and my grandfather and uncles and most of my cousins were wearing flowers on their lapels also. I noticed it because it made me think of another family photograph and the flowers pinned on my grandfather's lapel in the formal portrait taken on their wedding day. He was a recent German immigrant; my grandmother's parents had immigrated a generation earlier from the same Schleswig-Holstein region in Germany. Their wedding vows were spoken in the low German dialect from that area. My grandfather's wedding corsage--bigger than a boutonniere--looked to me like edelweiss--a memory of home. I liked that my aunts, uncles, and cousins wore these flowers to honor my grandparents' anniversary.
I am guessing this photo was taken by a professional photographer hired for the occasion. The photographer in me wants to know why he didn't move those chairs out of the frame. And who is that small child off to the left-hand corner? Not anyone in my family.
We can see people from head to toe in this full-length group portrait. As I looked at the feet in this photograph, it is mainly the women's and girl's shoes I noticed. None of them are really high heels. Evie's are even flatter and more "sensible" shoes than the other women's pumps. My grandmother's ankles are heavier than everyone else's, as she was heavier, an inheritance I was always wary of receiving.
Why was I surprised that Evie and Caroline were dressed alike? Or that I had never noticed? I'm not sure. At first blush, it didn't seem like a thing Evie would do. She seemed a little too bohemian to have thought of that, but then I was only comparing her to the very conservative personalities of the rest of the aunts and uncles. It was the 1960s, and it probably didn’t seem that square. I'm surprised my mother never suggested that she and I dress alike as much as she wanted me to be like her. I have no idea how 11- or 12-year old Caroline felt about it. I'm pretty sure I would have resisted.
I didn't really know Evie that well, certainly not as well as I knew my aunts on the other side of the family. In fact, I didn't know anyone in Daddy's family that well. We didn't see them often, not nearly as often as we visited my mother's family in North Carolina. Daddy's mother was a good correspondent and kept my parents up to date on what was happening with everyone, so I knew about them. I just didn't know them in my bones the way I knew my mother's family. I was always a little sad about that, and perhaps more so during the past few years as I have learned details of their immigration from Germany, their farm lives in Walcott, and my grandparents' move to town to raise my dad and his many brothers and sisters. I wished I had heard more about their lives directly from them.
It is not only visual aspects of this image that have new salience for me in this photograph, but it is also what seeing images of the people in it makes me feel. I think about my grandfather William as a 15-year-old leaving his family in northern Germany on a steamship. I think of William and Augusta as a young couple on their Iowa farm and then moving to town and raising their family during the Depression. I admire Henry's widow Rose for staying close to this family. I know some of the joys, but maybe more of the heartbreaks in store for these people. I feel more compassion than judgment as I look at these people now.
The magic of photographs for me is in how their meaning can change to meet us in our present selves. In 1962, someone I don't know anything about stood behind a camera and took this picture of these people. Daddy's family had copies made and sent him one. My parents kept it and passed it on to me. As I have lived into my life, I have learned more about these people and myself, and I can look at this photograph nearly 60 years after it was taken and feel something more or different every time I see it. Threads of love and connection pull me into the frame.
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William Henry Stock and Augusta Stock, Davenport, Iowa, 1916 and 1962.
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