Mildred Green has been identified in the picture. I met her at the Bentley reunion this summer. I showed her the picture wanting to get a confirmation that it was she who is standing beside Pauline Caudill. She told me she couldn't recognize anyone in the picture even herself.
Identifying the baby that Poppy is holding was our biggest clue to dating the picure. We went from Anna Sue to John Vint to finally who we really think it is, Teddy Bentley. The biggest help in confirming this was Janice Bentley Norman and her family. It looks as if Uncle Willie brought his whole family to this gathering.
Today my granddaughter, Claire, is seven months old. I am arbitrarily deciding that Teddy looks like he is about the same age and thus am putting the gathering to be August 1937, seven months after Teddy was born.
Someone brought this picture to one of the Bentley reunions in Millstone. I don't remember who brought it, but I was thinking it was one of the Bentleys from Greenup. I copied it with an old 35 mm camera. It was one of those tiny old pictures. When I got back into working on the family tree last year, I was at Uncle John Vint's visiting with him and Nancy and Lisa. I went through their pictures and copied a bunch of them with my digital camera. They had this one, too, and not knowing where my copy was, I just reshot it.
When I was checking it on the computer to see how clear it was, I saw that the computer said the picture was only 27% of its size on the screen. I had the whole picture on the screen so I began bringing it up to 100% and found that I could see the real detail. I made this crop of the picture.
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Once we could see who the people were, Uncle John, Lisa, Nancy and I set about trying to figure out who was who. Some were obvious. We knew Granny, Poppy, John Martin, Aunt Atha, Uncle Willie and Aunt Stella. Uncle John Vint identified some more. As we went around meeting with other family that weekend -- Ernestene, Candy, Otho and Pat Holcomb, we asked them for input, too. I eventually sent the picture to our Greenup cousins via Joe Bentley. I talked on the phone with different members of the family that he had shared it with. I know I don't agree with everyone, but here is what I have decided and put on the index version. You can right click any of these photos and you should get a larger version of the picture. I saved them in the largest format that the software would allow.
Now see the little girl beside Aunt Atha -- not the little blond -- the other one. She has been identified as Lola Boggs. She is Poppy's sister, Cora's daughter. I ran across another picture of what I first thought was another gathering. Then I realized that this same girl was in that picture. I started comparing and now believe that it was taken at the same reunion. I loved looking at this one to see how they had just spread things out on the ground like a real old fashioned picnic. Again, I copied it digitally and blew it up and cropped it.
There is Lola right in the center of the picture. And guess what? There is Pauline and Mildred down the line to her left. I have indexed it, too, but only have four people identified. I think that the baby beside Laura Belle Bentley might be Teddy in his mother's arms, but I can't really see enough of that to say for sure.
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I have copied this picture many times from other people, but none of them was very good. Janice sent me her copy which I think is a very clear one. She scanned hers from an original.
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This was taken the same day. Altough I knew Stella, Willie and Atha, I did not recognize Aunt Nettie or Laura Jane in the big group picture. From this picture of Poppy's children standing in birth order, I knew Stella, Willie, Nettie, Atha and Laura Jane. I was able to look from this picture to the other to identify Nettie and Laura Jane.
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I then took it and used Photoshop on it to try to get a few more details. I then cropped it.
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