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Photographs Have A Story To Tell, But We Must Get The Story Right

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By SHARON TATE MOODY, Tribune correspondent

Published: March 9, 2008

Do pictures lie, or can you believe everything you see? In this day of Photoshop and computer wizardry, certainly pictures can be altered.

But what about those old photographs Aunt Mary gave you? It's unlikely they have been altered. Instead, there's a different way of being misled. Family historians might not question their own assumptions and misinterpret what they are seeing.

I have several pictures of my paternal grandparents with different groupings of their 13 children. In one, eight of the children are gathered around my grandmother. The girls are wearing plain cotton smocks. The boys are in rolled-up pants or overalls. All are barefoot, standing in a dusty yard.

Most people would probably conclude they were a poor, uneducated family. The smallest child pictured is my father, who I know had only a fifth-grade education - another bit of information to make me assume this family was poor and uneducated.

But I need to consider any notions about my family within the context of the time.

This was a farm family in rural Georgia during the 1920s. The truth is that loose cotton clothing was preferred. In the days before air conditioning, it got mighty hot and sticky in the South. I remember being miserable as a youngster when I had to get "dressed up" in the latest material: nylon.

In the 1920s, most people in the Georgia countryside were "poor" by today's standards. Not having a lot of money was the norm. So was going barefoot. Certainly, you didn't wear your one good pair of shoes every day. They were saved for Sunday or special occasions.

The people in the photograph were just regular country folks of the day.

Were they uneducated for their time? When the picture was taken, graduating from high school and going to college were the exception rather than the rule. The usual form of education was learning at a parent's knee as the family gathered around the Bible, or keeping up with the farm books.

Farm children didn't go to school once they were old enough to work in the fields or handle farm equipment. Or if they went to school, it was only for a partial year. It was expected that children would be working on the farm during times when crops were planted, harvested or picked.

I have another photograph of this family, taken seven years later. My grandparents and their 13 children are posed under a beautiful oak tree. Grandpa and their nine sons are standing behind Grandma and their four daughters. The boys are not only wearing shoes, they also are in suits and ties. The girls, all in lovely dresses, are wearing heels and hose.

What a different impression I got. They looked successful and well-to-do. But farm families didn't have ready cash - how could they afford all that finery? And how could I find out what had happened during the seven years between photographs?

I went to Aunt Rose, the sole survivor of the family. She gave me the truth about the second photograph.

The older boys in the picture had left the farm and married. None had a formal education, but they found jobs in the community as carpenters, firefighters, salesmen and such. The oldest daughter had become a practical nurse, also without formal schooling. She worked for a family that paid her $21 a week and had purchased suits for the younger boys to wear in the photograph.

Several of the children had chopped cotton for three days, earning $1.50 each to buy the shoes they wore. Aunt Rose told me her dress in the picture had been the dress in which her older sister had married. The older sister was expecting her first child, but that wasn't evident in the photograph.

None of this was earth-shattering information, but it is interesting detail.

The point is when we are the scribes of our family histories, we need to record information correctly, including what a photograph depicts.

Of course, this won't always be possible. Most of us have those few old photographs of the beautiful mysterious woman whose name no one bothered to write on the back.

So here's another suggestion about old family pictures. If anyone in the generation before you is still living, take the time now to get the stories behind your treasured photographs.

Another Cruise

There seems no end to 2008 genealogy cruises. One cruise originally scheduled for last fall has been resurrected for Oct. 25 to Nov. 1. Lecturers will include two well-known Floridians, George Morgan of Odessa and Donna M. Moughty of Bradenton. They will be joining John Phillip Colletta, Stephen J. Danko, Michael J. Leclerc, Paul Milner, Laura G. Prescott and Paula Stuart-Warren.

The cruise, sponsored by Fly Away Travel Agency, will be aboard the Royal Caribbean's newest ship, Liberty of the Seas. It will depart from Miami and sail to the eastern Caribbean. Rooms start at $829. For details or to register, go to genealogycruises.com or call Cindy at 1-800-837-0295.

Sharon Tate Moody is a certified genealogist by the Board for Certification of Genealogists. Send genealogy questions and event announcements to her in care of BayLife, The Tampa Tribune, 200 S. Parker St., Tampa FL 33606; or stmoody0720 @mac.com. She reg

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