Grandma Addie Circa 1937

Here is a photo of my mom’s grandmother back when my mom was just a kid.  It’s not the best photo, but it is kind of interesting.  She’s standing in front of the family home in Hathaway, Louisiana.  It looks kind of ghostly in the background.  Grandma Addie must have been standing in the shade while the house was in full sun.

Addie May Hine was born on September 23, 1876, in Noblesville, Indiana.  She was the youngest of my mom’s grandparents, though she was only a few months younger than mom’s other grandmother.  Mom’s oldest grandparent was Addie’s husband Louis Charles Bucklin, who was born in 1873.  There wasn’t much difference in all of her grandparents’ ages.  But my mom never met her paternal grandfather because Lou Bucklin died in 1927.

Addie was only the second generation born in Indiana.  Her father George Henry Hine had been born there, but his parents had been born in North Carolina.  His family names included Hine, Cox, Miller, and Vestal.  Her mother Susan G. Stanbrough was from Indiana as well, but her parents had been born in Ohio.  Her family names included Stanbrough, Mills, Hester, and Brown.  The further back along the tree brings your further east and eventually to Europe.

Addie grew up in Indiana with her five younger brothers.  The family then moved to southern Louisiana in 1894.  A few years later she married Lou Bucklin and they started their family together.  They had twelve children, though she only had ten pregnancies.  That’s because she had two sets of twins – one set of identical boys and a set of fraternal twins of different sexes.  My grandfather Fred D. Bucklin was one of the identical twin boys.  He grew up and married Myrtle Phenice.  Fred and Myrtle had five children, including my mom, Betty Lou Bucklin.  

Little Betty Lou was born in 1933, and I’m thinking that this photo was taken around 1937.  This is around the time my mom had her earliest memories.  I think it was a year earlier when she had her most hated haircut.  It was cut really short and little Betty Lou did not want to look like a little boy. But she always had fond memories associated with her Grandma Bucklin.  I’m assuming that this means that her Grandma Bucklin was not responsible for that life-scarring haircut!  

But who couldn’t like Grandma Addie?  She sounds like a sweet woman.  Sure, sometimes it looks like she’s scowling in some of those old photos.  But if you heard her tell the story of her little dog Sammy getting hit by a truck, you can hear the kindness in her voice.  And actually, this photo is kinda growing on me.  Like I said, she’s not scowling.  Plus she looks very pensive.  She surely must have known that the person with the camera was standing there, yet she shows no evidence of that.  It seems more candid and timeless in some way.  I think I’ll just sit and stare at it for a while.