Looking into the past

My dad sent me this picture a few months ago and I’ve been kind of fascinated with it. It was taken in September 1905, that’s my greatgrandfather (born Carl Wilhelm Lilja in 1866 – but the immigration people changed his last name to Lilyea at Ellis Island when he immigrated in 1899 from Sweden with his young bride fifteen years his junior). That’s my grandfather next to him, Oscar Wilhelm Lilyea, born in August 1900, my Great Aunt Edith is the two-year-old cutie in the front, my Great Uncle Charlie is standing next to my Great Grandmother, and that’s Uncle Elmer on her knee.

On the back of the picture, my grandfather writes that he remembers the picture because he hated having his hair curled for the occasion. I can imagine, my grandfather ran a one-man sawmill operation until he was seventy years old. Elmer had a farm in Penn Yan, NY that he handed on to his son, who still runs that farm. Edith married a man, my uncle Barney (who’d fought across the Pacific with the Army) from Montana who raised beef cattle in Penn Yan until they both passed.

My grandfather also writes that he remembers none of them spoke English at the time – until he started school a few weeks after this picture was taken.

I’d always wished that I could see the world the way my grandfather saw it – he was born before the Wright Brothers’ flight and watched Neil Armstrong walk on the moon. Wonder where we’ll be a hundred years from now.

Category: Pointless blather, Society