kevin_standlee (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
kevin_standlee) wrote2010-08-14 10:13 am
kevin_standlee) wrote2010-08-14 10:13 am
More Mehama History
We have another old photo from almost exactly a century ago that I scanned and that we tried to match on Friday. Trying to figure out who was in the photo led us to some interesting pieces of information and allowed us to fill in some things Lisa didn't know about her family.
It is somewhat difficult to believe, but these two photos, taken nearly a century apart, are from almost exactly the same spot (within a couple of meters, as best we can determine). The barn visible in the older photo is so long gone that nobody alive here knew it existed. A smaller garage sat on the space directly in front of this photo until 2008. The barn would have been where the larger trees near the center of the newer photo are. The Old Stout House is only barely visible behind the riotous growth. It was slightly more obvious to us standing there holding up the old photo that we were in about the same place.
The 1911 photo has a hand-written caption on the back that reads, as near as we can make it out, "Luther & Ponies Goldie & Memory 1911." So who was Luther? I speculated to Lisa, "Would he have been a hired hand?" Lisa said, "No. The family never hired help, although they could have afforded it." (I'm not surprised by the latter; by local standards, it appears that the Stout family were pretty well-to-do, and this house would have been even more imposing in its heyday when it wasn't half-hidden by the trees.) She thinks it was some streak in them that said that if they couldn't manage to do it themselves, there was something vaguely immoral about hiring others to do it for them. Thanks to Google and RootsWeb, we think it must be Luther Stout, who would have been about 23 years old in this photo. Luther's father is Lisa's great-great-grandfather, about whom I will write more later.
Based on the old photo, we think this is the site of the old barn today, looking the opposite direction of the 1911 photo. There is no sign of which we're aware that there was ever a building on this spot, although I expect that if we dug, we'd find stuff.
To the left of the barn site is this little hollow in the trees, which Lisa says contained an outhouse that was still in use when she lived in the old house when she was much younger. (She didn't like it.) There was no barn or sign of a barn next to it, she says.
This is approximately the reverse angle of the 1911 photograph. The 1911 photographer would have been standing almost in the dead center of the area covered by this photo, just beyond and to the right of the low brush in the middle foreground. The barn would have been to the left in this photo where the heavy growth is. The low growth behind the fence is the site of the old garage that was torn down in 2008 and which area Lisa and I need to try and re-clear to make room for a storage container. (Not during this stay!) The gate controls access to the "farm tank" of gasoline and to much of the open field of the property, including the former hay barn now used as the wood shed. To the right is the back lawn of the Mehama Community Church; Lisa's father donated the small plot to the adjoining Church, which was itself built in the 1950s on land donated by Lisa's grandfather.
While trying to search who was in the photo, we learned more things about Lisa's mother's side of the family about which I will post later because there are too many photos in this post already.
It is somewhat difficult to believe, but these two photos, taken nearly a century apart, are from almost exactly the same spot (within a couple of meters, as best we can determine). The barn visible in the older photo is so long gone that nobody alive here knew it existed. A smaller garage sat on the space directly in front of this photo until 2008. The barn would have been where the larger trees near the center of the newer photo are. The Old Stout House is only barely visible behind the riotous growth. It was slightly more obvious to us standing there holding up the old photo that we were in about the same place.
The 1911 photo has a hand-written caption on the back that reads, as near as we can make it out, "Luther & Ponies Goldie & Memory 1911." So who was Luther? I speculated to Lisa, "Would he have been a hired hand?" Lisa said, "No. The family never hired help, although they could have afforded it." (I'm not surprised by the latter; by local standards, it appears that the Stout family were pretty well-to-do, and this house would have been even more imposing in its heyday when it wasn't half-hidden by the trees.) She thinks it was some streak in them that said that if they couldn't manage to do it themselves, there was something vaguely immoral about hiring others to do it for them. Thanks to Google and RootsWeb, we think it must be Luther Stout, who would have been about 23 years old in this photo. Luther's father is Lisa's great-great-grandfather, about whom I will write more later.
Based on the old photo, we think this is the site of the old barn today, looking the opposite direction of the 1911 photo. There is no sign of which we're aware that there was ever a building on this spot, although I expect that if we dug, we'd find stuff.
To the left of the barn site is this little hollow in the trees, which Lisa says contained an outhouse that was still in use when she lived in the old house when she was much younger. (She didn't like it.) There was no barn or sign of a barn next to it, she says.
This is approximately the reverse angle of the 1911 photograph. The 1911 photographer would have been standing almost in the dead center of the area covered by this photo, just beyond and to the right of the low brush in the middle foreground. The barn would have been to the left in this photo where the heavy growth is. The low growth behind the fence is the site of the old garage that was torn down in 2008 and which area Lisa and I need to try and re-clear to make room for a storage container. (Not during this stay!) The gate controls access to the "farm tank" of gasoline and to much of the open field of the property, including the former hay barn now used as the wood shed. To the right is the back lawn of the Mehama Community Church; Lisa's father donated the small plot to the adjoining Church, which was itself built in the 1950s on land donated by Lisa's grandfather.
While trying to search who was in the photo, we learned more things about Lisa's mother's side of the family about which I will post later because there are too many photos in this post already.