Saturday Snapshot: PaPa

I have a huge collection of family photos from both my family and Michael's. More from his, actually. His grandmother knew I was interested in genealogy, so when she died she left all her photos to me — and she had a bunch. I'm hoping to get them all organized and digitized this year, so I've been (slowly) going through all the albums and boxes, trying to put names to faces and figure out where each photo might have been taken. It's really difficult since our parents and grandparents have all passed on now. And our mothers wouldn't have been much help anyway — neither of them cared anything about family history. (Although my mom loved a bit of juicy family gossip as much as anyone, she always told me she thought it was "dangerous" delving too far into what happened in the past.)

But I'm determined to get it all sorted out someday. So I'll keep on scanning. Well, just as soon as we buy the new scanner — our old one doesn't really work with the new computer. Bummer.

Anyway, today's snap is from one of the batches I managed to scan before the system stopped cooperating. Since he was born in January (1896), I thought it would be appropriate to post this photo of my grandfather (my mother's father — "PaPa" to his grandkids) with my grandmother and my mother.

Mamma looks to be about a year old here, so this would have been taken around 1922, probably in San Antonio where they lived. She also looks like she's not too happy, but I imagine that frown is just from the sun in her eyes. Although she frequently used that same frown as an adult, and it could freeze you in your tracks.

PaPa was not a tall man — my grandmother was barely five feet tall and he looks to be about the same height here, although I think it looks like she's wearing high heels. In most of the photos I have of him, he's sitting down. A later photo, probably taken in the early 1940s, shows him and my grandmother with three of their four children — my mother is on the right, with her younger brother and baby sister beside her. There was another sister (the second child, after my mother), and I suspect she was the photographer for this one.

As I look at this snap, I'm realizing how much I'm starting to look like both my grandmother and my grandfather. Funny how genetics tends to creep up on a person, isn't it?

Well, happy Saturday, everyone! And now — back to my organizing.

Saturday Snapshot is hosted by Melinda @ West Metro Mommy Reads.

To see more snaps or participate yourself, just head on over to her blog.