This is Katherine "Kay" McIntyre and her friend Doria sometime around 1942-45.

We have tons of pictures of Kay and her friends and it's recently occured to me that although we know most of thier first names, their last names have been lost to time and the feeling that thier last names were just not important pieces of information to hold onto.
It is interesting that although there are many sites dedicated to ancestry and geneology, I can't think of any that have spaces set aside for close friends.

I come from a very small family and perhaps that is why I developed a handful of very close friends at a young age that have developed into extended "family". All of my milestones from grade school til now have been shared with the same handful of friends.
It seems to me that any historical record of my life would be lacking without thier being a part of it.
Seeing all of these pictures of Kay and the friends she kept for life, makes me think something important is missing in any family record that does not include them as well.
I've noticed that Ancestry.com now has a photo upload function. As they grow, maybe sometime in the future they might add links for other non-familial but never the less important, relations.
It is not only blood that shapes where we come from, I think it's clear that who we are is, in the end, built by all of our important relationships.

Charles Cummings

I think this might be Charles Cummings. The house in the background and the pony seems very similar to the photo I recently posted of Katherine Cummnings and the age seems right that this might be her brother.

I wasn't entirely sure who the girls in the second pictures were until I found the first one and noticed that the girl standing on the left is definately Katherine Eileen Cummings (my great aunt).
The other girl is either Katherine's sister Mary or her other sister, my Grandmother, Claire (also known as "Cecelia/Celia"). My Grandmother died before I was born and I did not see Mary often as a child but I did see Auntie Kay quite often and I think that's how I knew it was her in the more casual picture. The glasses threw me a little but something in her expression made me realize, "Oh, that's definately her."
I never knew Auntie Kay to wear glasses but I do remember her wearing contacts when I was growing up. I saw them on her dresser when I was a kid and thought the very idea of sticking little things into your eyes was just the weirdest thing.
I'm not sure when contacts were invented (or put into popular use by the masses) but I do know this may be the only picture I have of Katherine in glasses. There are tons of pictures of her from her late teens-30's and none of them show her wearing glasses.
I find it an interesting insight to her personality that she must have taken great care not to be photographed wearing them. I am pretty sure she wouldn't have had contacts until she was older, I just don't think they were in mass circulation then, but I could be wrong...

This one is really neat on a lot of levels.

This is my Grandmother Cecelia/Celia/Claire (Cummings) McIntyre and her brother Charles Cummings. When I first saw it, I thought how great it was that the background shows that the stone wall that now surrounds the yard was not yet built but the intersection of Walter Street and Cotton Street in Roslindale is still very easily identifiable.
(What happened to that evergreen behind them, who knows? It wasn't there in my lifetime...)
It's pretty obvious that this picture was taken at or near wartime but a mark on the back narrows it down even further.
"MAR 1943"
(My Mother was born June 6, 1944 which is no matter in regards to this pic but interesting none the less.)
I really liked this picture because I thought my friends Rebecca and George, who in the early 90's lived in a great attic apartment just up the street from where this was taken, would find it interesting.
But there was more...
Ages ago,
(sometime in the late 80's perhaps?)
there was a Christmas party at the Rolindale house and my Mother wanted to give a special gift to her Aunt Mary's family.
(Mary was "Claire", Charles and Katherine's sister)so she had some old pictures she had copied (this was before the ease of scanning, she paid a photograph professional quite a chunk of change to have those pictures copied and I remember how tense she was til she got the originals back, but I digress...)
I very clearly remember sitting in the living room near my Mother and Mary when small talk turned to where we were living, My Mother told Mary that we no longer lived in Brookline and had moved to Jamaica Plain. My Mother was describing the neighborhood when Mary seemed to recognise a street name and animatedly exclaimed, "We used to live near there!"
At that point her sister Katherine entered the room behind her and stated rather vehemently "We never lived near there." and kind of rolled her eyes a bit.
At the time it seemed that Mary might have been confused and the conversation was dropped but I always kind of wondered about it.
Then along comes this picture with a faded mark on the back that looks a bit like a postmark and reads "MAR 1943 Jamaica Plain".
I'm not sure who made the mark but taken in context of that old tossed away in the back of my brain conversaion, I think it's pretty clear that someone lived in Jamaica Plain in or around 1943 and they had to be close enough to the family to get the film developed.
Curiouser and curiouser...
I am sure there is some totally boring explaination but mysteries like this are why I really love digging through all these old pictures.
On the back of one in every dozen is a really great clue to figuring it all out...

Retro Beach Bunnies

With as much rain as we have had around here lately, it may seem that beach attire would be the most appropriate thing for all of us to be wearing these days...
I love old pictures not only for the people and things that the photographer meant to capture but the things that they inadvertantly captured without really thinking about.
Katherine McIntyre's bathing suit style is cute enough that it would be retro chic on the beach even in 2010 but can you imagine seeing anyone wearing a bathing cap on the beach or any men dressed like Charles Cummings (center) or Charles McIntyre?
I am also wondering if my Mother's (Kathleen McIntyre) suit was possibly a hand medown from her older brother, poor kid...

I wrote a long, lovely post about how my sister Sarah's (McNeil/Pearson) ancestors came to the Boston area via England and Scotland and Catherine McIntyre's (Cummings) parents came to Boston from Ireland.
I waxed poetic on the symbolism the statue represents to all who come to this country no matter how they get here.
It was a really great post,
would have made you cry,
which is what I almost did when I tried to post it and got a message telling me to hit the back browser and try again...
Anyhoo,
they say a picture contains a thousand words.
(or something to that effect...)
In this case it better because it's too late to write the whole thing all over again...

This "snapshot" could not even really be called that, it's size is only slightly larger than a postage stamp (a photographers proof perhaps?).
Looking at it in tiny size it appeared that the man in the fore front might be my Grandfather Charles J. McIntyre but blown up larger I am no longer sure that it's him.
The intersection where this was taken I would recognise anywhere tho, this picture was taken just outside Park Street station, Downtown Crossing, Boston.
Even without proper ID of the people in it, I still like it for cars and the history of place.
From approx 1998-2004 I worked as a Department Sales Manager for Filene's right up the street from where this was taken.
When I was a kid, Charles's second wife Catherine used to dress me up nice and take me "Downtown" to the restaurant located in the Filene's building where I eventually wound up working. Interesting enough I found myself working with women who had worked in that restaurant as well as women hired in the 1940's who still worked the sales floor. That building held an incredible amount of history not only in it's walls but in the memories of those who commuted there every day.
I haven't worked in that area for years but I still find the history of it fascinating.