The Starr Lineage

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Family Album 1880s

Pictures were hard to come by

Back in the 1800s.

The first of those were tintypes.

Each was one of a kind.

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Usually if you lived long enough

You might inherit your own likeness

as an infant; yourself already fading,

your mirror image sagging,

like memories of

your departed relatives.

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Many rare pictures were kept by

their children, and

If someone died young, God knows

who got the photographs.

My mother had a baby picture

of Ethel, but not of her own mother.

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You imagine your own collected

Heirlooms will be inherited by

your children’s children, but more

often than not they go to strangers.

A painting by my grandmother Ruth

is owned by Esther’s

Granddaughter.

I have few photographs of

my great grandparents ancestors;

Starrs or Bowers

before they were forty or beyond.

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Pictures of their early homes were

taken as an afterthought

decades after moving away.

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Any images I have of them

were taken by my mother

or Aunt Lillian, herself childless,

who ironically became

self-appointed family historian.

She wanted us all to remember.

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After she died,

Lillian’s nephew Alfred auctioned

off her hand made rugs; and

sold her collection of old photos

to a stranger for the monetary

division of her estate, instead of

distributing her legacy

of family heritage among her heirs.

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Writing is the Copyright of Ruth Zachary