Head Shot Nellie Schofield, a photo by midgefrazel on Flickr.
Photo # 4 Young Nellie Schofield
My great grandmother, Nellie's photos are rapidly fading
away. I gathered them together and placed them in archival bags. Previously, I
scanned the one which is full front faced because it gave me a very good idea
what this branch of the family looked like. My Schofield line is so interesting
because they came to America
and built the first woolen mill. I worked on them with a textile expert and it
was great fun. My friend, Brian Zoldak, photographed the gravestones I didn't
have in the cemetery in Montville,
CT. I can't wait to blog about
those gravestones.
Nellie doesn't look like the picture of health in these
photos. Not only are they fading, I have extra copies of two of the photos and
I don't really know why. One set was obviously my grandmother's copies and I
think the second set may have been found when Nellie passed away. She outlived
her husband by many, many years.
Because she was a Schofield (which should be spelled
Scholfield), her photos were taken in three changes of clothes in the family
photography studio in Westerly.
Her bangs look different and I am thinking that the one that is full faced was
taken after she married because it doesn't have the photographer's imprint at
the bottom.
I've scanned the ones that are the least damaged. I think
the bar pin that is on the one with the full body pose is the pin (the one I am touching in this photo) that my mother gave me before she died. I missed the
opportunity to ask if it belonged to Nellie but I have decided to call it
"Nellie's pin". My mother didn't like that they called her
grandmother, Nellie, and insisted her name was Ellen. I have no birth record.
The first record I found is her marriage to J. Fred Barber. The 1905 RI census
gives me her date of birth.
As she aged, her medical problems worsened and by 1935 she
looked older than she actually was. You will see that photo in an upcoming
post. But, for now, I want you to examine her face carefully. See the dark lines
under her eyes? Allergies, I think.
Those dark lines helped me be sure of her father's photograph.
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1 comment:
Oh yes, I can see the dark lines. Nellie looks much better in profile ... but apparently she was long-lived, which is great. I also am in the process of trying to archive photos before they fade away completely. It seems a slow and painstaking process. I think photographs speak volumes, and we should preserve them as best we can! Thanks for this post.
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