Three generations - 1979

Ken, Vera, Matthew, Julia, Muriel

Sandra, Steve and Nick in front

(and oh how we used to dress up to go to tea!)

Three generations - 1950

Vera, holding Terry, Ken, Muriel

Harold, Dora holding Sandra

Three generations - 1926

Luther and Elizabeth, Harold and Dora and Ken and Muriel

the first of three photographs of three generations

before I bring this series to a close

And after the wedding ... June 1916

Proud grandparents - paternal grandmother and maternal grandfather (Luther the man behind the camera again) - and parents.   Nearly two years after the wedding a daughter, Muriel.   By then Dora and Harold had moved to Stamford for employment, but part of the happiness on his face is that he had been declared unfit for conscription.   Tom, his father-in-law, declared himself 'delighted' about this;  two of his sons had already been injured in France, having enlisted with the Canadian Expeditionary Force.

Teasers

And despite hours and hours of matching,comparing and trying on families for fit

I am far from sure of the identity of the matriarch in the top photo

and not a clue about any in the photo below

Wedding photo

After the engagement, the wedding - 4th June 1914 - and not as happy an occasion as it ought to have been, because in January Sarah, Dora's mother, collapsed in the street and died shortly after being carried home, and in April Dora's brother's wife Effie died in chilbbirth on her 23rd birthday - born in New Zealand, she and Dora had been corresponding for three years.

Somewhere around 1911

Such innocence and stiffness in this engagement photograph!

My grandmother, Dora Sutcliffe, and grandfather Harold Pickles.
It is from her I inherited my widow's peak and, less happily, I have his receding chin and over-prominent nose.

The studio background adds chilliness I think.

Body language too!

Not so much the faces on this one - I suspect this was the first formal meeting of the inlaws!   The couple on the right are the parents of the man my grandmother married, all the rest are her family. 
The chap at back left goes by the splendid name of Pliny Summerskill.
On my lines of communication blog I have put some early attempts at fictionalising my family history - in anticipation of this meeting, Elizabeth Pickles is lying awake beside her husband Luther.

Easter bonnets indeed!

Not so much the faces on this one - and I know them all! - but the idea of going for an Easter hike in all this finery, up and down the hills around Warley, near Halifax.   This was taken in 1910

Key to identification

From some nine mostly unlabelled photograph albums and using what I knew of who and when I eventually identified all but two on this Christmas day 1905 photograph.

Sutcliffe doubles

In 1878 Tom Sutcliffe married Sarah Sutcliffe (1854-1914) eldest daughter of George and Nancy Sutcliffe.

Ten years later Tom's brother Sam married Sarah's sister Mary (1866-1927) - always known as Polly - and childless themselves they were evidently, from dozens of photographs, proactive uncle and aunt.


Sarah's photo was taken in 1909  when her second eldest son was visiting en route from New Zealand, where he had just met his future bride, to Canada, where he was about to begin building a log cabin for her.   Polly is four years earlier, Christmas day 1905.   Regrettably there is not a single photograph showing Tom and Sarah together.

John and Susannah Sutcliffe - three surviving sons

Tom, 1855-1930, the eldest son, from when he was about twenty-three if this, as I think it might be, a studio wedding portrait.
Sam, 1863-1930, when he was forty-seven, at a family christmas gathering, and unusually serious.
John, born 1869 died in Johannesburg, alone and unmarried in 1923, not in disgrace but certainly sans photographic evidence

John and Susannah Sutcliffe - three surviving daughters

Ann, 1857-1929, who married Brooke Rowley;  Alice, born 1861 and died unmarried in 1940, a much-loved maiden aunt, and Emily, 1866-1918, wife of Pliny Summerskill who later bought the house where John and Susannah lived until their deaths.

Susannah Sutcliffe, née Greenwood [1828-1899]

Serious as befits the age

but maybe thinking of the four daughters

already buried

[Ruth, Emily, Ellen and Clara]

John Sutcliffe, 1829-1902

Woolstapler, 'much esteemed'
with a warehouse in Dispensary Walk.
Asthmatic, said to love cricket
and his wife, Susannah.

[photograph taken ~1875]

Leave it to the reader!

No actual faces today
except that of my husband
all the others belong to a cast of characters
deliberately hazy

Over-analysing the landlord?

To me, the eyes so bright and blue
smacked of something false and over-weening
and his 'Much obliged' for our lunchtime custom
of desperation.

Faces: at the gym (2)

Jo, who is usually smiling
looked heavy-eyed.

And now my turn

Two new frown lines
followed by despondancy
which doesn't help

Even at the gym!

Daughter's make-up immaculate
just as her mother,
clearly brought up to believe
she can’t leave the house without it.

Friday shop assistant

Far from good-looking
but the genuine warmth of his smile
considerably compensates

Two never-seen-before men (at the gym)

Liquidity of conversation alerted me to likelihood
of stubble-dark good looks and olive-eyes,
but oh, they were so short!

Faces: at the gym

Creepy, ever-present smirk
presumably to counterbalance the haughty aristocracy
of her nose.

New month but no ideas!

I'm totally lacking ideas as to what to use as a 'theme', no matter how loose for this month's blogs, partly due to the fizzling - or drowning - out of April's plans.   It seemed to me that April passed with exceptional speed - I certainly intended walking the two and a half mile route into Yarm on at least one occasion but many days were lost to rain.   

This image is from a book I made when I was at college.   Its title -  'Concertina guide to conception' was inspired by the  expression on this face.