From the mystery photos: baby on a step

A black & white but sort of sepia photo of a baby in a bonnet looking to their left, sitting in what looks to be a Dr.'s bag or a carpet bag (today's weekender?) on a doorstep with a paneled door behind it, shingle siding, wide trim around the door. Its slightly out of focus as if the person didn't quite know how to take the picture, or if the subject was moving.

The photo is from a collection of my maternal great grandmother's albums. Most are on the same paper with the white border, same B&W/Sepia quality. They start in 1918, and go through the late 40's. She would have been 20 years old in 1918. I can't find her on the 1920 US Census.

I have a hunch of who this is & where my great grandmother was, what she was doing. There's a fantastic indexed item on the big A genealogy website "Mae Intorf." Is that you gran?

I started doing genealogy to try and figure out who my people are and why they are the way they are.

The issues I have in identifying this image are : the stories she told don't match records. The records she did file don't match previous records. What seems like things could be is probably not something some parts of the fam want to have out there. Some fam I've spoken with have told me the Other side of the story of a couple events that just stopped me in my tracks.

She was a complicated person. I can understand creating a false history based on what she'd been through. I can see how she treated her grown kids & how those kids treated each other, and how she played a part in some decisions that eventually affected my life.

I can forgive her, and her kids, and their kids. Kids are innocent, this baby is innocent. The adults?

Something to think about when you write your histories this year.

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Knitting My Tree Together

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