Peter P farm 2

As noted earlier, the photograph provided by Abe and Alice Buller contains details that merit closer examination. With that in mind, we begin by zooming in on two boys in a wagon left of center in the 1913 photo. First the full photo, then the detail:

The sharpness of the image is degraded when we zoom in, but we are still able to see two boys sitting on a wagon (a buckboard?) drawn by two horses. The older boy on our left is wearing a light-colored hat; the younger boy on our right may be wearing a dark hat. According to Abe, the older boy is his father Ben and the younger boy is Grandpa Chris. As far as I recall, this is the earliest photograph of Grandpa that we have seen thus far.

The apparent ages of Ben and Chris enable us to suggest a date between 1912 and 1914. Ben was born in 1897 and was thus fifteen in 1912; Grandpa was born in 1906 and so was six at that time. Since it appears that Ben could be fifteen to seventeen and Grandpa six to eight, a 1912–1914 time frame seems likely for this picture.

One final observation just made: a sliding door is clearly visible in the background of the detail above (to the left of the window in the middle). That sliding door is still visible today (see the detail from a 2015 photograph below), even though it was closed off and sided over. We will zoom in on other people and elements in the 1913 photograph in subsequent posts.