Aunt Gertrude
A weekend visit with my father had me return with another armful of envelopes loaded with an amazing pictorial history of his mom’s side of the family. I’ve been scrutinizing such pictures by the hundreds these past few months. With the previous ones, it was just nice to see and share old family pictures that I had not seen in years, not since really diving into family history. I could tell from those, however, that there was a gap: they mostly skipped from the late 1930s right to 1950. The pictures I took home this weekend filled in that gap. More surprising, though, the number of pictures I had predating the 1930s was now greatly increased. Included are a few of my grandmother as a teenager (younger than I ever recall seeing her), a bunch more of her parents, and many, many more of all of her brothers and sisters. Except for one. I probably had only met my Aunt Gertrude a few times before 2000. She lived in the southern end of New Jersey, and visits between the families just didn...