Gilley/Crawford Family Pictures
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Picture
sent in by Niki Lee from Lewiston, Idaho ndlee69@hotmail.com
Left to right are James Gilley, James Henry Hayse,
Rufus "Buster" Crawford, Mary Adline Davis Gilley (widow of John B
Gilley), Susan Eleanor Gilley Crawford holding Trevo Crawford, child in front of
her is Lannie Crawford, and to the far right is Mary Frances "Mollie"
Hayse McDuffey. Photo was taken about 1903-04 at the Gilley place, which I think
is near Boonsville. Mary Adline Davis Gilley is my gr-gr-grandmother.
I
am attaching four photos here. The one of Mary Ann Elizabeth Gilley Barfield is
my great grandmother and she was born in 1876 so I am dating this photo to about
1882.
The other three are mystery photos. My theory on these women is that they might
be three older sisters of my great grandmother. I showed these to a person
recently who pointed out that none of them look like they are even related to
each other and I have to concede that point. I have photos of two other sisters
to my great grandmother so I know what they looked like and none of these three
are either of them. It is interesting, however, that those two sisters didn't
look remotely like each other, either, and at least one of them bore absolutely
no resemblence to photos I have of my great grandmother in later years.
However, one of the reasons I think might point to them being related is that it
appears that the photos were all taken in the same place. Each one of these
people are seated in a chair that has fringe under one arm. In one of them you
really can't see any fringe because there is so much damage to that part of the
photo, but the arm of the chair does look similar. I have no idea if my gr gr
grandparents owned such a chair or if this belonged to the photographer.
I also believe these photos might have been taken at the same time because of
the hair combs each of the three older girls has in her hair. I did a little
research on those types of combs and found out that these were in fashion in the
1870's and early 1880's. Whether or not the combs belonged to the girls or were
props provided by the photographer is anyone's guess. Then there are the lacy
looking neckerchiefs tied around the necks of each of the older girls. I
couldn't find any reference to this practice at all and I Googled a lot of
images of tintypes from this era and didn't find anything similar.
I obtained these tintypes from a woman in California who sent them to me in
2010. They were all in a leather pouch that had belonged to my great uncle,
Lonnie Barfield, so I tend to believe that whoever they were, they were related
to my family. They could be Gilleys, Barfields or Davises. I have to believe
that Lonnie wouldn't have kept them all his life unless they were family. Could
be a bunch of relatives got together one day and lined up to get their
photograph taken. They didn't necessarily have to all be sisters. They could
have been cousins, too.
One thing needs to be mentioned here....each of these four images here are
tintypes and I have the originals. I only recently found out that tintypes are
"flipped" images. So what you see as the right side of a person's
face, etc., is actually the left side. Also, "Gilley 3" was very, very
faded and slightly out of focus so that is the reason it doesn't quite
"fit" with the overall look of the other ones. I adjusted it as much
as I could to better show detail but this is about the best I can do for now.
And you can probably see that "Gilley 2" young woman is, well, rather
cross-eyed. That could be a clue perhaps to her identity.
Because there are so many blemishes on these images, and it takes so long to
remove all those speckles, I decided that I would just clean up the faces for
now and if someone who sees them and recognizes one as "Great Aunt
Fannie" or some such thing and would like a fully restored copy, I will be
happy to do that for them. And of course, I will "flip" them so they
reflect accurately which side of the image is correct. Of course, I am hoping
that someone can identify who these young women are.
My candidates for who they might be are: Sarah Eveline Gilley Thedford who died
in 1883, Melissa Jane Gilley Hayse who died in 1891, and Frances Odus Gilley
Stricklin who died in 1893.
This
photo is of James Wilcox Walker, and his wife (and my great grandmother's
sister) Rebecca Emily Gilley, and their seven oldest children. If I have it all
figured right, this would have been taken right after the birth of Buford Weldon
Walker in 1901.
The other children are (in order of their birth) Jesse, John, James, Vera,
Ellena, Dewey and the baby Buford. The original photo is in a cabinet card which
gives the name of a photographer in Decatur, Texas.
One sort of interesting note to this photo is the boy on the far right, whom I
figure is James, appears to be wearing a dress of some sort. That portion of the
photo is not only slightly out of focus but has quite a bit of speckling and
other blemishes so it isn't really clear. He seems to be wearing a suit jacket
like the other two boys but if you look down it looks like he has on a pleated
skirt. I know it was common at that time for little boys maybe up to the age of
2 or 3 to wear little dresses but I can't imagine why a boy of 8 or 9 would be
wearing something like this. Anyway, that's just a side note to this photo....
This picture and article are from the Bridgeport Index 1999. Click on them and they will enlarge big enough to read.