Double View of Grandma Sue
I’ve shared several pictures from this event back in 1926. The photos are just so good because they have so many of my family members in them. Though it says that it is a double view of Grandma Sue in the title, it’s not a double exposure from the event. I shared that one two years ago. That was the last time that I shared a photo from that event, so I thought it was time to look at that event again. I was looking very thoroughly through those photos a few weeks ago to look for something specific, but I can’t remember what it was. I didn’t have any new revelations about the photos either, but I still want to share these photos from 98 years ago.
And it was exactly 98 years ago today. My great great grandmother Susan G. Stanbrough was born on October 3, 1851, in Westfield, Indiana. That was 173 years ago. She married George Henry Hine in 1873. Their first child was my great grandmother Addie Mae Hine and she was born in 1876 in Noblesville, Indiana. They went on to have five more children – all of them boys. In 1894 the family moved south to Louisiana and settled in Hathway, Louisiana, in Jefferson Davis Parish. Addie got married in 1898 to Louis Charles Bucklin, who had moved down to Louisiana from Iowa with his family in 1884. Their seventh and eighth children were Fred and Clarence Bucklin, who were born on October 2, 1907. Fred is my grandfather, because he was the father of my mom Betty Lou Bucklin Landry.
Let’s go back to the year before my grandfather was born. In 1906 Grandma Sue and her friend Jennie Welton Havenar decided to have a joint birthday celebration. You see, Jennie also had a birthday on October 3, though she was a few years younger than Sue. According to the newspaper, the first birthday celebration must have happened around the beginning of December in 1906. It was reported to be a great turnout with over seventy of their friends and family in attendance. The reporter wrote about “hearty wishes given to the two ladies for many more such happy occasions in their lives.”
Sue and Jennie must have taken that to heart, because that’s exactly what they did. They had a joint celebration for their birthday for the next twenty years at least. And it seems that the number of family and guests grew along the way. We know that the following year at least two new family members appeared – Fred and Clarence. And their birthday is just a day before Sue and Jennie’s. I wonder if that was a good thing for the boys. For at least the first twenty years of their lives, there was a big birthday celebration that everyone showed up for – and it was for their grandmother and her friend! I’m sure that at least a time or two it actually fell on their birthday. Hopefully people remembered to wish them a happy birthday as well.
The photos I’m sharing today were from the 20th Anniversary of the Double Birthday Celebration. The two photos look like they were taken at almost the exact same time by two different photographers. Very interesting. According to the newspaper it was held on October 3, 1926, in Elton, Louisiana, at the home of Mrs. W. E. Havenar – that would be our Jennie. They both had one daughter and four sons alive at the time, as well as many more grandchildren and extended families. These photos were taken of Grandma Sue’s family. Uncle Rowe died in 1916, and Grandpa George died in 1919, so they were not there. Addie is standing just behind Grandma Sue, a habit she had in family photos taken through the years. Fred Bucklin (Addie’s son – my grandfather) is the nice looking 19-year-old young man on the back row toward the middle of the photo. He seems to be happy to be celebrating his grandmother’s birthday. Maybe they had a birthday cake for him, too!
The 1926 newspaper article called this event the climax of these double birthday celebrations. Did he know something that he didn’t mention? Maybe Sue and Jennie had decided that this would be their last one and they decided to have a big send-off for the event. If not, at most they could only have had three more joint celebrations, because Jennie passed away in March of 1930. She was only 63 years old, younger than I am now. Three years later Grandma Sue died at the age of 81.
Here’s to Sue and Jennie. Let’s celebrate their births all those years ago. Hear, hear!