Alice and Kids

These are the last 2 photos in the second album. 

Baby Dot and her pull toy

No date, but likely 1918

Alice, top right, with a passel of kids

Elwood J. is to the right of Alice. Is that his sister Betty in front?

My guess is that this photo is from around 1932.

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The next batch of 75 or so photos I'll post are loose, not pasted in albums. Most of them have helpful info on their backs, which means I can arrange them by decade, so the images will appear in something like chronological order for a change, and some will even be in color. The photos date from the 1890's (Elwood G.'s baby photo) to the late 1950s/early 1960s—when Grandma Alice moved to her home in Fanwood, New Jersey. 

It's Memorial Day

It's one of the days on which we honor those who served our country, 

including two generations of the Smith and Bierbaum families. 

Alice's note on the back of this photo of Elwood G. and his nephew is 

"Raymond and his Uncle El." 

Taken in or around 1917

 A generation later, there was new war. 

Here is "Brother Joe."  

No date

Here is my old man as a very young one, in his uniform. Photo is circa 1942. 

After he died, we found the buttons from that coat in his dresser drawer. 

Elwood J. hated the army, but he saved the buttons.

Girls in Frocks on a Rock and Baby El

No dates on any of these photos of the girls frolicking in frocks on a windy day. My guess--Muriel and Alice are the two on the right. I still can't tell Ruthie from Dot, but I think that's Ruth in front. (Don't e-mail me if I'm wrong!)

Baby El. No date but this must be from 1926. 

3 Men & a Baby—3 Girls & a Soldier

Three men and a baby: Elwood G., baby Elwood J., Alice's brother Bob, Raymond (Elwood G.'s nephew), and ?? It was most likely taken in 1926.

Baby El, on the same outing. Though Kathy and Betty suspect it really was Bob's little girl.

 Three gals and a soldier: Alice as at far left. Likely taken in 1917.

Frolicking swimmers at Lake Nelson

Three Sisters and More

 Another "Day at the Beach" photos. No date, but other beach photos were dated 1921. 

 Alice holding little Elwood J., probably 1926.

 Three Bierbaum sisters, most likely in 1920.

Widow, 1919

This is the saddest of all the photos in the collection: Alice simply wrote "Widow 1919." She looks like Ann Fischer.

On the same page, these two photos. If the baby is Elwood James, then these are most likely from 1926.

Another photo that you'll see shortly makes me pretty sure that 

this is Alice's younger sister, Helen, with baby Elwood James. 

Elwood James for certain. I recognize that scowl.

Lakeside Fun

Here is a group of photos, undated, but I'd guess 1926. My father Elwood James Smith was born on October 4, 1925. In these photos, he's a toddler, spending time with his Aunt Ruth, who was only 5 years older. 

I'm not sure who all these folks are, but the young man on the left is most certainly Joe Bierbaum, Alice's younger brother. He caught a fish on the same day. Is that Ruth again on the "tricycle," front right?

I assume that Bobbie is either a cousin or a neighbor.

Is this the lake in Piscataway, NJ, I always heard about from my father? The land around it had long been developed by the time I came along, but I heard about summers spent at "the lake." I went to Rutgers University in the late 1980s and lived and drove near where the lake and the house had once been—or so I thought; Daddy's directions were never very clear—and also near the cemetery where Grandma and Grandpa Smith are buried. Piscataway and New Brunswick were almost completely citified by then, yet I had a sense of what an open, rural place it had been 50 or 60 years before. 

-L

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.