Ann Fischer, 1920

Alice and Friends, 1918

Back to 1919

We've seen versions of these photos before. 

Ann, Pa, Alice 1919

Clockwise from top left, I think we have 

Mildred, Ann Fischer, Alice, and her older sister Anne

Graduation Day, 1915

Here we are at the end of the first of Alice's albums. 

Posted on the last page is one of its oldest photos.

Alice Bierbaum in 1915 on the occasion of her graduation from the eighth grade

If this photo was taken in the spring of that year, then Alice was a girl of twelve. 

This is the earliest photo of Alice in this collection. 

 This photo is not from the same album page as the others shown here, 

but it is from the same year, if not the same day. 

 Here is Alice's younger brother Joe with their baby sister Dotty in 1919.

We've seen a slightly different version of this photo earlier in the album—

Great Grandpa Bierbaum at the beach surrounded by the girls--

daughters Anne and Alice, and their friend Ann Fisher. 

I will start posting photos from another, smaller album of Alice's. 

The photos are from the same period as this album--the late 1910s to the mid 1920s, 

and they show many of the same faces and places. You'll see! 

Girls Frolicking, and Babies

We are reach the last few pages of this first album. 

The pages are a bit hodgepodge. 

There are no notes and no dates, but based on other photos--

still to come and from other albums, we can identify a few faces.

Based on photos we've seen earlier, here's my guess, clockwise from top left: 

Ann Fischer, Alice, Mildred, and ??

Same girls, new arrangement. 

 This badly faded photo is of Alice's daughter, Betty. 

A better photo will follow in a couple of days. 

This one is not dated, but Aunt Betty knows the year. 

I'm not telling here. ; >

Finally, there is this photo, badly torn. 

Based on a similar photo with handwritten notes, this is Raymond Smith, 

Elwood G.'s nephew.  This photo is among the earliest in the collection. 

My guess is that it was taken in 1915 or so.

Alice Laughing, 1919

Alice, goofing around, in 1919

No date on this one, but the shorter skirts and girlish faces 

suggest that it's from earlier; school days most likely.

Anna Fischer, 1919

How Life Can Change

The ribbon that held together the pages of Alice's photo album has long been missing, so I am sure the pages are out of their original order. However, I can't mix up the order of photos pasted on back-to-back pages. This page, front and back, shows how dramatically Alice's life changed between 1920 and 1927.

Here she is looking crisp and elegant, with Ann Fischer, in 1920 at age seventeen or eighteen.

Here she is in 1927, married and with two babies of her own. Betty, in her mother's arms, is just a few months old. Elwood is about 18 months.

These baby photos are most certainly Betty in her pram.

Alice and Siblings, 1918

Finally some siblings. Alice had two brothers and four sisters: Anne (b. 1899), Robert (b. 1900), 

Helen (b. 1910), Joseph (b. 1912), Dorothy (b. 1917), and Ruth (b. 1919). Alice took a lot of pictures of her two youngest sisters, as you'll see. They were so close in age, that even she had trouble telling them apart in the photos. On the one at bottom, you can see that she crossed out Ruth and wrote in Dot. 

Friend Ann Fischer is here again. Kathy can tell me if that's Annie Mac on the right. What is Alice doing with her hands? It's as if she's pretending to be holding the dog's reins. No idea about the dog's name. I never heard stories about a dog. He (or she) is quite handsome, though.

 We scanned this one just in time. Little Ruthie is fading away.

Dot, not Ruth. 

-L