Another non-photo prompt for the theme this week. I was (again) a little behind getting my act together and getting a post up, but hey, here we are, finally! Since I’m sticking with family photos for my submissions to Sepia Saturday, I took the horses from the prompt image and came up with mules and photo I’ve been wanting to include sooner or later.
This is Harry Oscar Frederick Powis, aka “Fritz.” He was my great grandma Olga’s brother and lived from 1903-1972 in Clearfield County, Pennsylvania. Thanks to Olga’s efforts later in life to go through and label photos, we know this was taken 27 May 1920 in Coalport, PA and is of, “Fritz and his friendly mules.” Her pen traces over an earlier pencil label likely done when she was much younger. Fritz didn’t live or work on a farm to my knowledge, but the mules may have been used at a coal mine, hauling up loads of coal, similar to the linked photo here. There were farms in the area of course, but unfortunately the 1920 census taker didn’t enumerate this family in 1920 (same census taker missed a number of houses in the area), so I don’t have a paper record of what he was doing in 1920. I guess it’s not out of the realm of possibility for those to be farm mules, but I have no family stories or documentation to prove it either way. Still, it’s a lovely photo and it’s really wonderful to have an exact date to go along with it!
