Among various photos in an envelope marked "Before 1930" I recently found this childhood portrait of my grandfather Gustaf T. It's one I can't recall ever having seen before - it's not included in his photo albums.
I doubt I would even have recognised this boy as my grandfather if the photo had not been found together with other later photos of him (probably sorted at some point by my father).
Gustaf was born in 1904, and I'm not sure which year this was taken, but this is probably the earliest photo of him that exists. I don't know the year but I'm guessing ~ 1909. The outfit he's wearing does not look like anything I've ever seen! - but it vaguely reminds me of illustrations of Little Lord Fountleroy (book by Frances Hodgson Burnett from1886...)
This is where Gustaf grew up though - more like "the little house on the prairie"!
Until I found the portrait at the top, this one was the earliest I had - found in one of my grandmother Sally's albums. A childhood portrait of Gustaf (born 1904) together with my grandmother's brother Nils (born 1902). I'm guessing it may be from Gustaf starting school (1911). - At first, I only recognised Nils in this photo, and had no idea who the other boy was. It was only later that it dawned on me that it must be Gustaf, and that he and Nils had been friends since early childhood.
They're also both in this Sunday School photo from 1912. Gustaf (8 years old) is 4th from the left. Nils (10 years old) is 5th from the right (front row).
And this is from the village football (soccer) team, a few years later. Nils is (unmistakably) the tall one in the background (captain/coach?), and Gustaf the one with the "attitude" standing in front of him...
I remember that it was comparing it to another photo of the two of them as grown up young men that convinced me who was Gustaf in the football photo!
This is another photo from the envelope, which I can't recall having seen in any album.
I also found two portraits from his military service in 1925:
And this one is glued onto a hard cardboard frame with the embossed text "Memory from my military service".
What a happy discovery to find all these new (mostly) photographes of Gustaf & Nils. I've been lucky enough to have a few "Oh my gosh." experiences like that and it's happily exciting! Lucky you and good sleuthing to figure out who's who. :)
ReplyDeleteGail, I still have a big box of post-1930 photos to go through that are probably mostly copies of such that I already know from the family albums - but who knows...
DeleteWonderful to find new old photos of a person from that long ago. I still think in terms of the turn of this century having just passed, but yee gads it's over 23 years ago, I'd best get into it!
ReplyDeleteBarbara, working my way through the family history from my grandparents' childhood and onward, I'm almost beginning to feel like 120 years old myself by now... ;-)
DeleteWell done! I always enjoy detective stories that involve comparing faces at different ages. For family members it's sometimes their expressions that we recognize or posture. Your new photo of young Gustaf reminded me of Little Lord Fauntleroy, too, but his hat looks more like a sailor's cap. I bet you could find advertisements for that kind of boy's suit in Swedish newspapers of that time.
ReplyDeleteWhen my mother was age 4-6 she endured having her hair curled in the Shirley Temple fashion which was popular in the 1930s. I have several photos of her with long curls and wearing a beautiful white crocheted dress that my grandmother made for her. And I still have the dress too!