Love and Romance Sepia Style – Sepia Saturday

This weeks Sepia Sat theme is Love and Romance as seen on http://sepiasaturday.blogspot.com/
We are going to visit “The Colonel” who can be found on some other posts, the beach theme is another featuring pictures from his albums.
Im still pretty new to buying old photos, but have my hands on quite a few Albums, I love finding photo albums with pictures still in them. And many appear to be of military men. I also have 2 albums now that have some level of secrecy it appears to them. And it makes me wonder if this was common in the past, for people to have a past they hid in photo albums, whether it was an affair, or if these are just documenting their life before they settled down and were married.
Women are typically more sentimental to save momentos and journal things in an album, not to say a man wouldnt, but I wonder who put these albums together and then I wonder who kept them all these years? Was it a woman or the man?
Well when it comes to the Colonel, they were with the man and this was told to me along with my purchase.

Welcome to a little Romance with the Colonel……

Says “Miss Miriam Hutchins” on the side and Camp Dick, Dallas, Texas, Dated June 29, 1918

Im not sure what branch of military by his uniform so maybe a reader can chime in. So my guess is this is a pile of Hay or something of that nature because they had fun posing with it as you will see. Miriam looks VERY young from the photos in this album and there are many of her. A cute and pretty little thing. I wonder what every happened between the Colonel and her, well because this album seems to showcase other women the Colonel was with, but Miriam does reappear several times.

Here we have the Colonel again but who is this? Its not dainty little Miriam with her curls. Hmmm appears the Colonel likes to take the ladies to the same spot? The side of the Haystack photo reads “Quit your kidding!” and the second photo his hat is on the ground and he is holding a puppy, rabbit? a small animal of some sort?

Now who do we have here? I do not think this photo is Miriam or the other girl, but maybe one of the girls you can see in the Beach theme post I did a few weeks back. This page in the album is a bunch of small photos that are torn along the edges but still placed in the album. A bunch of tiny torn scraps but this one is the most complete of the bunch.

Was the Colonel a Lady Killer back in the early 1900’s? What I do know is I have all his life possibly premarriage or out fooling around, and then it skips to an album of him as a family man. With the wife and child being the showcase of the last album. And the wife is none of the ladies in these photos.

The albums reak heavily of cigarette smoke, but are in wonderful condition and were kept in a safe place and protected well.

I did do some searching sometime ago for a Miriam Hutchins since her full name is contained in the album and the location of Dallas, Tx in the one photo in the early 1900’s.  I used the Family Search website to obtain census info, there was a Miriam Hutchins in Travis, Texas in 1910 and 1920. She was born around 1903, so if I do the math from the photo if its her, that would make her 15 yrs old in the pictures which looks about right. Her parents were James and Annie Hutchins and she had a younger sister named Anna Belle.

I must close with this photo, a little snippet into my family.

July 1956, Iowa, My Mother and Father. Mom had her dark hair and cat eye glasses, holding a puppy. And Dad, a much slimmer version of the Dad I have always know with his arms around her and laying a kiss on her cheek.

My how times change.

I have never seen my parents like this other then in a photo.

That part of their life when smiles and kisses were on their faces with the thought of one another is long gone.

But its still amazing to see such a photo, it tells a story from long ago. A story I know bits and pieces of.

Photographs often show happy times, or everyone plastering on a fake front for the camera, but often times the stories behind them arent always Rosey.