Sepia Saturday

Sepia Saturday 344-c

By Sheetar 15 October 2016 15 October 2016 4

Another week in our, “From Here to There,” theme for Sepia Saturday! This week, I thought I’d feature a car and my great grandmother, Olga (Powis) Kitko. The back of this is labelled, “Me & Joe’s Car,” which, from a previous post, helped lead me to identify a photo of my great grandfather as well. That car is featured in a number of photos with either Olga or Olga and a friend sitting in or on it, and it seems to have been quite the prize for Joe to have. I assume this is around 1930, possibly plus or minus about 2 years. Olga is wearing a rather pretty outfit between the shoes and dress and I have to wonder if possibly this was taken to commemorate their wedding. I haven’t yet been able to find a marriage certificate for Olga Powis and Joseph Kitko despite a lot of searching. My suspicion was that they stayed together under a common-law marriage, but now that I sit here and think about this image, it’s entirely possible they did get married out of state or somewhere I didn’t think to look yet. So, I’m left with more questions than when I started this post, but it gives me a few more things to think about!

Sepia Saturday

Sepia Saturday 344-b

By Sheetar 10 October 2016 10 October 2016 2

Late again, and Sepia Monday doesn’t quite have the same ring, but here it is! In another week of our, “From Here to There,” monthly theme, I have a ship coming into port. These were taken by a member of the Jaarsma family, and if I have my dates lined up right, they were sending a visitor, Fokke Brander, back home on the Nieuw Amsterdam on the Holland America Line at Hoboken, New Jersey. I’ve had these photos on the side and had been doing a little work to sort out who this man labelled as “Brander” on the back of the photos was. I finally fit him to a man named Fokke Brander, born 18 Jun 1900 in Obergum, Groningen, Netherlands and died 8 Oct 1961 in Uithuizen, Groningen, Netherlands. He likely knew my husband’s grandparents since he lived near them when they lived in Holland, and came over to visit once they emigrated to the USA.
In the photo above, you can just barely make out the ship’s name behind the tugboat’s big “M” stack. At first I thought I wouldn’t be able to identify this ship, but looking closely enough, I could make out a “N_EW AM” which led me to the Nieuw Amsterdam. I knew the port had to be the Hoboken New Holland Line terminal just like all the other arrivals they captured, so this helped narrow things down. Eventually, I found the departure manifest for the Nieuw Amsterdam which listed Fokke Brander as having left the USA on 8 Sep 1953 (Ancestry.com link), so the summer clothes in the photo make sense – it can still be quite warm in early September in the New York City area.

scan00896 And here’s the man himself, Fokke Brander, standing on the right side with his luggage, shaking the hand of a man only identified as “Dijkhuis” in other photos. The back of this photo is labelled, “Goed bye to Brander,” so I can safely assume this is the day he departed. I haven’t yet been able to identify all the other people in the photo, but Mr. Brander shows up in a number of other photos with the other folks in this picture, so I assume he was making the rounds visiting everyone. It’s pretty neat to have this sequence of photos to line up together and tell a story about Fokke and his visit to the USA!

Sepia Saturday

Sepia Saturday 344-a

By Sheetar 5 October 2016 5 October 2016 2

I know, I keep getting later and later on these, but I’m still here! It’s been a difficult week, so I think my lateness is acceptable under the circumstances. We have a new theme for Sepia Saturday for the month of October, “From Here to There.” Our prompt image features a bunch of ladies on bicycles, and with my husband’s Dutch ancestry, we have LOTS of photos of people on bicycles, so here’s my first submission! On the left is Ellechien Dijkema and on the right, her sister and my husband’s grandmother, Hilje Dijkema. This was probably taken in Holland, somewhere around Uithuizen in the late 1920s or early 1930s. The girls were born only 2 years apart in 1912 and 1914 respectively, so there are a lot of photos of these two girls together. Here, they’re posed on their bicycles, balanced together while being supported by a fence, wearing matching dresses.

This is a bit of an odd photo and I have the hardest time visually making sense of it – it almost looks like part of the photo is a negative, but the girls’ clothes and faces are positive. It doesn’t look like the photo has degraded, but it’s possible there might be a bit of a double exposure going on, juding by the line towards the right side of the image. Regardless, it’s a sweet photo of the two of them out on their bikes and I’m glad someone paused them to take this!

Sepia Saturday

Sepia Saturday 343-d

By Sheetar 25 September 2016 25 September 2016 0

This is the final week of the theme for 343, “Work and Play,” and I’ve really run out of steam on this one. I found one of a young girl that mostly fits in, so we’re going with that! Pictured above is Sarah Berger, and I know that because someone thoughtfully decided to label the back of the photo! I didn’t have much to start with other than her name, but assuming she lived near my great grandmother Olga in Clearfield County, Pennsylvania, I started searching Ancestry.com for Sarahs that may fit the bill. I stumbled upon a Sarah Berger living with her parents and grandmother at age 15 in the same town as my great grandma. That had to be her! A little more sleuthing and I found that Sarah Berger was born 1 Jun 1914 and died 2 Mar 1989. She married Mirrel Yingling aon 7 Oct 1935 and had one son, Edward Yingling. In the photo above, you can see she’s standing in front of a little scooter style tricycle which makes this fit into the play category. I’m not sure who took the photo – it could’ve been Olga or it could’ve been her parents and a copy later shared with Olga. I know Olga kept photos of a number of kids from the neighborhood, so it’s neat to finally learn a little more about the gal pictured in this one!