Gert's album

January 8, 2007

My mom's mom was Gertrude Theonore Stocke Swanson.  Gert kept this photo album from ca 1912 - ca 1920.  She clearly put a lot of thought and feeling into it.  There are many photos that I've found nowhere else, and it contains the best prints I have of several others.  It starts out with family pics, then lots of her friends and their activities.  It depicts fashion, leisure activities, WWI and prohibition.

I'm always on the lookout for whole-family shots.  I know of only a few such photos of the Stocke family and this one is the sharpest.

These include Gert's mother, her aunts, cousins (Ramona and Sybil Iverson), a mystery boy named Bobby, and four of her siblings.  I knew Gert's aunt Mary and her siblings Mil, Alice, Arn and Oz.  Fritz died of lung cancer in 1945.  I think the last one was taken on Grandma Iverson's porch, as in this picture.

Here's a great one of Gert's grandfather, Anders Olaus Iverson.  I have another print of this that is a color laser copy of Alice Stocke's original.  I think this is a photographic copy made from Alice's copy, so this one has better resolution than my laser copy.  The second one has a similar story.  Before this, I had known this photo only from Karin Pollock's album, and my only copy was a 35mm photograph of that original.  The photo below is another surviving original, probably made from the same negative as Karin's copy.  It doesn't have the whole Stocke family in it (Gertrude and Ossie are absent), but it is a 4 generation shot.

Gert's parents, Annie and C. O. Stocke.  Heading for church?

We have very few pics of Thea, so it's nice to find this one of her and Annie.

Gert's brother, Oswald Stocke (Ossie in the album, we called him Ozzie), went to war in 1918.  There are photos of him at Camp Sheridan, AL wearing a gas mask, with his rifle, and this one with his mess kit.  The second photo shows the whole Stocke family in front of Ossie's girlfriend's house with her and parents.  Her parents were both siblings of Gert's husband's parents, so I think this is how Gert met him.

Anna Louise Peterson Swanson, Gertrude Stocke, Annie Iverson Stocke, C. O. Stocke

Helen Swanson?, Mildred Stocke, Oz Stocke, Hal Stocke (Oscar Carl Swanson behind him)

Esther Swanson (Fritz in front of her), Arn Stocke, Alice Stocke