The Keys Family Circa 1938

Here is another great old photo that I wish I had. I guess I kinda have it already, but this is a rather poor resolution of the photo. I can still make out who many of the people are in the photo, but there aren’t many more details that can be made out.

The photo was taken in Elton, Louisiana, in about 1938 in front of the home of Leonard and Edessa Keys. This is my mom’s extended family. My mom was Betty Lou Bucklin and she is the girl standing in front of the adults with her hands down by the side of her dress. Her younger sister Alma is to the left with the blonde hair and it looks like she may be getting ready to dance a jig. Their older sister Sylvia is the older girl sitting in the front. I’m not sure who the child on the left of her is, but I’m thinking it could be younger sister Loris. The young girl on the right is Marilyn Phenice, my mom’s first cousin.

I’m hoping that someone else in the family has a better copy of this photo. I found this scan in a group of photo scans that my dad gave me a few years ago. It seems like my mom should have had the original photo since my dad scanned it, but it may have been lost in the moves and clean ups. So if you do have a better copy, send me the best scan you can make. I’ll clean it up and share it with everyone on here.

Let me go ahead and try to name a few more of the people seen in the photo. The reason I named it the Phenice/Keys group is that central in the photo are my mom’s maternal grandparents Harry Clifton Phenice and Daisy Keys Phenice. Also present are some of their children. But the bigger influence on the name was the fact that at least two of Daisy’s siblings are in the photo.

Grandpa Phenice (H.C.) is standing in the center holding his hat. Standing between him and my mom is Daisy. To the right and behind H. C. is my grandmother Myrtle Sylvia Phenice Bucklin and my grandfather Fred Bucklin. Now that I look at this photo more closely, I realize that I’ve posted a Fred Bucklin family photo that was taken on this same day. I called that one “Depression Era Bucklin Babies.”  That photo confirms that the little girl in front of Betty Lou in this photo is Loris.

Now, who else do I see? There’s Aunt Marguerite second from the left. She’s pretty easy to recognize. (Imagine my embarrassment if I’m wrong about that!) To the right of her are Henry Phenice and his wife Irma Hetzel Phenice. Then there is Orville Phenice. (He and Myrtle, Marguerite, and Henry are children of H. C. and Daisy.) I’m thinking that Orville’s wife Elta Whitman Phenice is standing behind and between Daisy and H. C. Orville and Elta are the parents of Marilyn.

The man standing to the right of H. C. is Daisy’s older brother Leonard Keys. I suppose that could be his wife standing next to him. She’s kinda cute and Leonard’s wife Edessa May Havenar was a cute young girl. (Her identity had been confirmed by her granddaughter Carolyn Segraves Conner. She also informed me that the girl on the far left was her mother Edith Keys.) Between/behind Leonard and Edessa are two men. The one in front is Warren Phenice, another son of H. C. and Daisy. The other man looks like he’s standing on something in the background.

To the right of Edessa are four more people. The first woman is Daisy’s younger sister Mabel Keys Miller. The woman kinda standing in front of her and facing toward the middle of the photo looks somewhat familiar. I think she may be Mary Bucklin Phenice. But neither of the two men around her look like her husband Sylvan Phenice, so that could be incorrect. I have been told that the man on the far right is Ray Miller, the son of Mabel Keys Miller.

I’ll be editing this post as I get feedback from the cousins about the identities of unidentified or mistakenly identified individuals. Maybe I’ll even get an ID on the hidden person.

So that’s what this post is all about. I want a better version of the scan and I want more people identified. Oh, yeah, and I want everyone to enjoy the old photo of my family.

---

March 30, 2019 Update

I said that if I ever got a better scan, I would clean it up and share it with everyone.  So that’s what I’m doing.  My cousin Mary brought an original copy of the photo to me yesterday.  She got it from our 2nd cousin Kristie.  Thank you Mary and Kristie.  Kristie’s a cousin from the Bucklin side of the family, so she was okay with letting go of photos of the Phenice family that she is not related to. 

The photo is much sharper than the old scan that I had previously.  You can see the faces of everyone so much better.  You can see that Aunt Irma is looking to the side at something.  You can also see that Aunt Sylvia is sticking her tongue out.  I thought she looked a bit mischievous in the photo!

I got several photos.  I know who a few of the people are, but there are several photos that have unidentified people in them.  Either way, I got some new old photos and that is always exciting!  They’re supposed to be people in the Phenice family, but I’m not so sure.  I’ll have to explore a bit. 

So here is the new and improved version of the photo.