My mother Marian on the left her elder brother John in the middle, her younger brother Robert on the right with the dog in his arms. Maybe 1926? was born in 1912. Wish I knew. Would like to ask who is that gray haired man on the porch?
From my grandmother’s album.
This afternoon I was digging around in a desk drawer, looking to clean out some papers and cards. The ongoing downsizing effort.
I found this fifty year old Daily Record Newspaper clipping sandwiched in a manila folder along with an old MAD magazine that sold for a quarter.
That’s me, top left in the hood (with my mouth open) Photo by George Baumann
My maternal grandmother, Charlotte Rowley VanSickle, reading at home in Durand Illinois -1916. A favorite photo of mine. She looks so young, peaceful and content at this time in her life.
From the archives
Mary reads to a Maura at the Met.
On the left.
My paternal grandmother, Mary Alta Kerr, born February 7, 1895 and her brother and sister. I need to do more research, dig around in a box, to get info on her siblings details. I know she called her sister “Sis”.
This is the grandmother who taught me to knit when I was little. No date on the photo. She looks to be 5 or 6? Maybe 1900-1901?
Mary Alta Kerr Hendricks passed March 13,1979 and is buried in Morrisonville, Illinois.
My mother, Marian Van Sickle, pulls her brother Robert in the wagon. Durand Illinois. 1918.
From my grandmother’s album.
My friend V gave me a really cool device that converts old slides and film negatives to a digital file. I used it when I was teaching photography and helped a colleague preserve some wonderful pictures of her family.
Tonight I started thinking about my own slides I found while cleaning out a drawer and brought the file converter out. After re-reading the steps to use the converter, I was successful. I won’t do a whole slide show today but wanted to put this 1966 picture up of me with my family. I’m the one on right front (eighth grade) and I am sure my mother and I sewed our fashion choices on the old Singer sewing machine.
Certainly next time I can center the cardboard frame more accurately. I left that exposed pipe in, too. In an upstairs closet, are forgotten metal carousel trays of slides to convert but just did the 24 images tonight.
Once you get a rhythm it doesn’t take too long.
What I’ve noticed is a LOT of the slides I’ve kept for decades are not worth converting into a digital file for posterity.
But did I put them in the trash? Not yet.
Will save some of those treasures for a future post.
Thanks for the great gift, Vincie. 
My Uncle -Robert E. VanSickle Durand, Illinois from my Grandmother’s Album 
My Uncle John, Uncle Robert my Grandfather Judd and my Mother, Marian
A Throwback Thursday Post.
My paternal grandmother’s older sisters.
Martha and Sara. Sara was called “Sister”
My grandmother was born in 1892.
I found this postcard in a box. There is no one left to ask for more information about them.
Eight years ago in Hardy, Virginia.
Four grandkids running in the field behind their other grandmother’s home-instead of posing quietly for a Christmas card photo.
We had fun, if my memory serves me right. Ha. I’ll have to see what the family sent out for the card that year.
