Photo #18: Four Generations

Barber Family 1935, a photo by midgefrazel on Flickr.

Photo #18: Four Generations

Mathematical luck. That's what families who have four (or even five) generations alive at one time is. New Englanders and probably Pioneer families with good health and great genetic makeup seem to have this kind of generational anomaly. At least that's what our earliest families would have thought of us that to have photos like this one. With death from childhood diseases and women who survive childbirth a rarity in our modern life, we will tend to be able to have this interesting type of photo in our future.

This is the first four generation photo in my maternal family. Taken in April of 1935, it dawned on me this week when  I finally had a full birth date for my 2nd great grandmother (from the 1905 RI state census) that this event must have taken place to celebrate her 89th birthday.

When I had a baby, my family celebrated another photo opportunity for some of these same people to be in another photo, which we took again in April at my home with my toddler daughter. My husband also had a photo taken with his parents, my daughter and my oldest grandson before his parents passed away.

Genealogists define a generation as 25 years for men and 18 years for women but I think that with women becoming more educated and delaying childbearing to establish a career, I expect this to equalize somewhat.  My son-in-law's parents are ten years older than we are and they have children with children, and two of them are now old enough to have a four generation photo in the future. Family is everything.

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Photo Identification
Photo taken at Elm St. Westerly, RI
photographer was Evans Stewart, Sr. 

Back row:  Father Barber 1866-1949 (J. Frederick Barber), Evans Stewart, Jr., (1917-1951) Dorothy Barber Bliven (1895-1981), Roy Gavitt (Martha Blanchard Barber’s nephew) (1913 to unknown), Harold Barber (1890-1944)

Middle row:  Mother Barber (1867-1944) (Nellie Schofield Barber), Grandmother Schofield  (1846-1944)(Sarah Gardner Schofield), Josephine Barber Stewart (1893-1992)

Front row:       Martha Blanchard Barber (1879-1968) (Harold Barber’s wife), Dorothy Stewart Broadfoot (1916-2002) (my mother)