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Friday, October 23, 2015

The Hanna Family

The Hanna Family, c.1910
On a number of occasions here I've talked about the possibilities and excitement of finding heretofore unseen-by-the-public historical photographs from the area. I know there have to be a good number of them out there, and it's a thrill to be able to find them and share them with people who'll enjoy seeing them. There's only one little problem -- they often come with less than complete documentation.

If we're really lucky, the photo will come with good information as to who or what is shown. A lot of times, though, the accompanying information can be frustratingly sparse. It might give the general location of a house, but not the exact location. Or we might know what family the subject of a photograph is from, but not exactly (for sure) who they are.

These are the issues I ran into with a couple of pictures sent to me a while back by Donna Peters. There's a photograph of an old house, and one of four people (and a dog) on what's obviously the porch of that house. We knew that they belonged to the Hanna family, but, initially, not much more than that. After going around and around for a while (and thoroughly confusing myself in the process, not that that's a high bar), and with the last-minute help of a few additional pictures, I'm confident that I know who the people are. The house, though, is a different matter. We'll get to that in a moment, but first, the people.