Lulu (Richardson) & Bruce Bernard, PEI
Don't you just love old family photos? While I agree that each photo is worth at least a thousand words, it would be nice if the photos could also speak, as most often the detailed stories behind each image is lost once the people shown are no longer with us. And sometimes, even learning the identity of captured likenesses is a challenge.
Some time ago I borrowed a group of old Richardson family photos from my mother's first cousin Ralph living in Washington state. Some photos had captions on the back, and as I asked questions about the others I wrote the responses on the back. Only a few mysteries remained.
My best laid plans to scan, digitally enhance and organize these pictures took much too long to fulfill (I can't blame it all on temperamental scanners!). But I am pleased to announce that they have all been scanned and at least partially enhanced (although some were badly blurred and/or damaged), and have now been mailed back. But I wanted to do more with these photos.
Earlier this fall I had created a digital photo book for my mother's Andrew, Richardson and Compton heritage (see blog posting in Sept 2013), which has now been printed. Rather than trying to include all my family photos in one book, I thought it was better to attempt smaller and more manageable projects that would be more achievable and affordable. So I focused in on my mother and her Andrew family, with a bit about her Richardson and Compton ancestors. That book became an overview, only 22 pages, only 5 of which showcase the Richardson line. And there is almost nothing on the current generations. It was a great start!
Some time ago I borrowed a group of old Richardson family photos from my mother's first cousin Ralph living in Washington state. Some photos had captions on the back, and as I asked questions about the others I wrote the responses on the back. Only a few mysteries remained.
My best laid plans to scan, digitally enhance and organize these pictures took much too long to fulfill (I can't blame it all on temperamental scanners!). But I am pleased to announce that they have all been scanned and at least partially enhanced (although some were badly blurred and/or damaged), and have now been mailed back. But I wanted to do more with these photos.
Earlier this fall I had created a digital photo book for my mother's Andrew, Richardson and Compton heritage (see blog posting in Sept 2013), which has now been printed. Rather than trying to include all my family photos in one book, I thought it was better to attempt smaller and more manageable projects that would be more achievable and affordable. So I focused in on my mother and her Andrew family, with a bit about her Richardson and Compton ancestors. That book became an overview, only 22 pages, only 5 of which showcase the Richardson line. And there is almost nothing on the current generations. It was a great start!
So as I was organizing and scanning this borrowed batch of photos, I realized that they focused mainly on the descendants of Henry Melbourne Richardson, my maternal grandmother's oldest brother, who went by the name Melbourne, or Mel. (I remember we visited him once when I was a child - we traveled to Seattle to attend the Seattle Worlds Fair there at Easter time, 1962, but otherwise we didn't have much contact with this branch.) It was exciting to learn from these photos that in September 1946, Melbourne and his wife Marion went on a cross country trip to visit relatives in PEI on the east coast, and also in Westholme BC on the west coast (near Duncan on Vancouver Island). The surviving snapshots of this trip are very valuable for locating various relatives on either coast.
Dean, Mel, Marion, Syd, Harry. 1946, Westholme BC
In 1946, Melbourne's parents in PEI were very elderly (both were to die in 1951). His sister Lulu (Richardson) Bernard had died in PEI in 1940 and his brother George Lewis Richardson had died in WA state in 1943, so his only living sibling was my grandmother Nell (Richardson) Andrew who was married to Harry Charles Andrew and was still in PEI. The war had ended the year before, and the Andrew family had lost their farm to the air base on PEI. Nell and Harry's son Dean had been critically wounded during the war and needed a milder climate in which to convalesce. So in 1945 Harry decided to move to the west coast, near Compton relatives who were dairy farming in Westholme, along with sons Dean and Sydney, and his sister Mabel and her husband Major Fred May. Other Andrew children, Alan and Eleanor, also joined him later that year. By 1946, Harry and Nell's oldest son George was married and settled in the Toronto area, Nell stayed behind in PEI to nurse her ailing parents. My mother Mabel was working in Summerside, and Harriet was married to Charles Clark in PEI with one young son Arnold (Harry and Nell's first grandchild, 20 more to come). So this group of photos captures this family's migration while still in transition.
With such stories to tell, I decided to create another digital photo book, focusing on the Richardson line, specifically the descendants of Sydney Richardson and Isabella Harriet "Ella" Compton, my maternal great-grandparents and parents of both Melbourne and Nell. My original plan was to include all of the photos I had borrowed, so I could send a copy of the book as a thank you gift for the extended loan. Then I decided to include a few of my own photos to support a back story on the Richardson origins, and to tie the various subjects together. But as I progressed through the project (which I worked on almost constantly for over 2 weeks!), more and more related photos crept onto the pages. By the end, I had a total of 50 pages (in 8" x 8" format), again without covering most of the current generations. It was enough! Two copies of the book are now on order, and I look forward to receiving my copy in the mail before Christmas.
If the book below won't load, please try this link to the Richardson book on Shutterfly.
With such stories to tell, I decided to create another digital photo book, focusing on the Richardson line, specifically the descendants of Sydney Richardson and Isabella Harriet "Ella" Compton, my maternal great-grandparents and parents of both Melbourne and Nell. My original plan was to include all of the photos I had borrowed, so I could send a copy of the book as a thank you gift for the extended loan. Then I decided to include a few of my own photos to support a back story on the Richardson origins, and to tie the various subjects together. But as I progressed through the project (which I worked on almost constantly for over 2 weeks!), more and more related photos crept onto the pages. By the end, I had a total of 50 pages (in 8" x 8" format), again without covering most of the current generations. It was enough! Two copies of the book are now on order, and I look forward to receiving my copy in the mail before Christmas.
If the book below won't load, please try this link to the Richardson book on Shutterfly.
Click here to view this photo book larger
Create a gorgeous, high quality wedding photo album at Shutterfly.com.
RSS Feed
