Family Photos: Growing Rye

Included in the box of treasures sent by Carolyn (Peters) Stucky were twenty-one family photographs. The photos range from the 1930s through the 1960s. I will periodically post some of those photos on the blog but am happy to send anyone who wants the scanned files as well.

The four photos below were, according to a comment on the back of one photo, taken on 4 July 1968. It seems pretty clear that all were taken the same day, since Sara and Maria, the two subjects of the photos, are dressed the same throughout. The comment on the back of the third photo below reads: “Harvesting our rye crop in our back yard. Had a lot of fun watching it grow and mature.” 

I confess that I know only the basic details of Sara’s and Maria’s lives. I know that Sara was a nurse and that she and Maria also moved when their parents, Peter P and Margaretha, retired to California. They did return to Henderson, presumably after the death of their father in 1964. Thus it is safe to locate these 1968 photos in the back yard of their house in Henderson. (If someone knows where that house was, please let me know.) When the photos were taken, Sara (born 30 September 1899) was sixty-nine and Maria (born 21 May 1908) was sixty. 

The top photo is of Maria standing in front of unharvested rye; her left arm and hand hold up a bunch of cut stalks. Note the shocks of grain on the right of the photo. The second photo is a comparable shot of Sara; she is holding a set of shears, the top of which is, upon closer inspection, likewise visible in the photo of Maria. The final two photos show the sisters cutting the rye (or at least pretending to). 

If anyone can add further context or information to these photographs, please do so.

Correction and Update

I asked … and received. Thanks to Carolyn for supplying additional details and photographs relevant to the post above about Sara and Maria. First and most important, the photos of the sisters harvesting rye were taken in California, not Henderson, Nebraska. In fact, according to the date on the back of the photo of the moving van to the right, they moved in August 1973, so slightly more than five years after the rye photos were taken.

Their house in Henderson is pictured below. Carolyn reports that it was at 811 S 15th St., two houses north of Dave and Elizabeth Regier (their house is visible on the far left of the photo). Elizabeth was Sara and Maria’s sister. The website Xome.com (here) reports that the house was built in 1969, so it was relatively new when the sisters made it their home.