December 2010 Everything’s Relative

All those unsmiling old photos make us think of our ancestors as stern people. But your funny ancestral pics beg to differ. The readers who shared these examples of old-fashioned levity caught on film will receive the Family Tree Pocket Reference.

 

 

1. It was a bad hair day for both Robert Reiman, the father of a Durham, SC, reader who shares his dad’s name, and his horse, Calvin, who went for this ride around 1934.

 

 

2. We’d love to know what Spofford, NH, reader Barbara A. Tourgee’s mother, Catherine Donahue (seated on the pot) and her friend Fran Smith are up to in this early 1940s image, but the cause for their clowning remains a mystery.

 

 

3. Unbeknownst to the more-mature members of the King family—gathered for son Rufus’ Army homecoming—little Leroy (center front; uncle to Lehigh Acres, Fla., reader Deborah Herron) thought he’d attract some attention of his own. 

 

December Challenge: Supersize Families
Forget the Duggars and the Gosselins, two famously large reality-TV families. We know many of your relatives raised their own big broods (before TLC was around to televise it). Tell us about your ancestral family with the most offspring. If we include your entry in Family Tree Magazine, we’ll send you a copy of Family Tree Legacies to help you keep track of all those kids.