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Favorite Photo

Week 2 of #52ancestors

 There are so many candidates for a favorite photo. The one of my mother and her sister as little girls pushing a doll buggy full of kittens. One of my great-grandfather sitting on his front porch, leg across one knee, smoking a pipe. It's hard to pick one favorite, but I find it best to go with that first instinct.

The one that came to mind as soon as I read the topic is a typical group photo in front of a house.

My great-grandparents are in the middle of the back row. Octavus Chambers holds his youngest (at the time) child Lester, the only boy out of an eventual seven. To their right is Mary Jane (Havens) Chambers. Given the estimated date based on the children's apparent ages, we think she may be pregnant with my grandmother, Millie. The others are her relatives from the Havens, Barrows, and Bockoven families.

 Many of them had just been names and dates to me until I saw this picture, which came to me totally by accident.  I was at a Chambers family reunion (as mentioned in the previous post), when my cousin Rick Ross came up to me, carrying a large envelope.  "I had this copy made for someone who decided they didn't want it, and I thought you might be interested." Clara, second from the right in the front row, is his grandmother, and he has a lot of old photos.

 I love this view back in time.  All of the children in the picture were dead either before I was born or could form any lasting memory of them. I'm fascinated by Gustin Havens' shaggy eyebrows, and wonder if his wife Harriet was really as severe as she looks. How often did all these people get together, and who got along and who didn't? As is typical in genealogy, a new find just raises further questions, but I'm glad to have this one.

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