Favorite Photo

One of my favorites is a 1914 photo of Ted Rademacher (Dale’s grandfather) with two younger siblings, Clem and Albert.

This post is inspired by the “52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks” challenge.

I like this photo for two reasons.

First, we came to have this photo in a very roundabout way. More than thirty years ago, we found out that the mother of one of my clients had lived next door to the Rademacher family in Snyder, Colorado back in the 1910’s. She had kept this photo for decades and had always hoped she could return it to a family member someday. It’s a long and convoluted story that I explained in more detail in this post from 2014.

Second, this picture captures so many details about rowdy little farm boys. For the older two, their mother Annie Rademacher has apparently bought shirts big enough to grow into, so they’re wearing sleeve garters to make them fit better. Clem has a scowl on his face, I don’t think he wants to be in the studio. His boots are scuffed, they’re probably the only pair of shoes he has. Ted’s tie is dancing all over his shirt, it had probably been tidy just minutes earlier. And little Albert is going along with his brothers for the moment but doesn’t seem to be entirely trusting of the situation at hand. The photographer was probably lucky to capture the three of them in a still moment before they went off running again.