Wednesday, January 23, 2013

(Not So) Wordless Wednesday - Post 240: Evelyn and Aunt Emily in 1921

I'm posting family photographs from my collection on Wednesdays, but they aren't Wordless Wednesday posts like others do - I simply am incapable of having a wordless post.

Here is a photograph from the Marion (Seaver) (Braithwaite) Hemphill family collection passed to me by Aunt Marion's daughter in 2000 after her passing. 



Fortunately, someone labelled this photograph as "Evelyn & Aunt Emily, 1921" but they neglected to say where it was!

Evelyn is my father's sister, Evelyn Seaver (1903-1978, whose mother was Alma Bessie (Richmond) Seaver; they resided in Leominster, Massachusetts in 1921), and Emily is my father's mother's sister, Emily White (Richmond) Taylor (1879-1966; they resided in San Diego, California in 1921).  Evelyn is therefore Emily's niece.

The site of this photograph appears to be a sandy area with wind and water-shaped cliffs in the background.  San Diego has several places that match that description, including Sunset Cliffs on the ocean side of Point Loma, and in La Jolla.  My best guess is that this photograph was taken in La Jolla.

If the photo was taken in San Diego, then that means that Evelyn came west to visit her aunt and cousin in 1921.  I knew that Emily's daughter, Dorothy, had visited Massachusetts in this same time frame (early 1920s) to see her aunts, uncles and cousins.

How did my Aunt Marion (Seaver) (Braithwaite) Hemphill (1901-2000) obtain this photograph?  I think that Dorothy (Taylor) Chamberlain (Emily's daughter), or Dorothy's daughter, Marcia, sent it to her cousin Marion at some point in time.  I think that the handwriting on the photograph is in the hand of Marion since it refers to "Aunt Emily."  

Now what about those dresses and the hats?  I know nothing about 1920s fashion, perhaps someone with more expertise can comment.

The URL for this post is:  http://www.geneamusings.com/2013/01/not-so-wordless-wednesday-post-240.html

Copyright (c) 2013, Randall J. Seaver

3 comments:

Claire Keenan Agthe said...

My thought on seeing the rocks and the beach, and the bundled-up women, was, "It looks like a Maine beach." (Growing up with NJ beaches as my reference point, I was shocked to see what Mainers consider a beach the first time I was in New England). Are you sure it's in the San Diego area? Maybe West Coast came to visit East Coast, rather than the other way around... My only experience with CA beaches was dark, coarse sand, not the light sand in the picture--but I'm sure you know more about CA beaches than I do!

Claire Keenan Agthe said...

Interestingly enough, I just recently was given a copy of a photo of my grandmother and two of her sisters at a NJ beach in (if memory serves) 1931. Granted, it's 10 years later than yours, but my photo shows all three in (extremely modest) bathing suits. Your ladies being fully dressed does suggest to me that it's a beach (like Maine) that's too cold for sunbathing.

anitab said...

I was just looking (yesterday) at a photo of my grandmother and her sister, taken on a 1925 trip from Los Angeles to Vancouver, BC; and the thing I am struck by is the similarity in the glasses. Maybe they wore those glasses when they were in an open car?