Photos from my Past

Some of you may remember that I wrote on here about my cousin Joe and how he finally gave me back some pictures that he borrowed over 15 years ago, and how thrilled I was, because all the other photos I had of my parents, grandparents, and my childhood were lost years ago. I promised that if I got a chance, I would scan some onto here.

Well, yesterday, we bought a combination scanner/printer/copier at the Emerson UU yard sale, and it turns out it works perfectly. So, for you history buffs and those of my Gather friends who are curious, here are a few photos for you:

These are my paternal grandparents, Thomas Lee and Mary Minerva Pruitt Martin. i never knew my grandfather, because he died when I was 2. I believe the first picture was taken before their original house burned down in th3 30's.

The other is in the 40's.

This is my grandmother and her brothers and sisters in 1929, when my grandmother was about 45 years old. She is the one with the stripes on her dress. She looks older than she was, but having 9 kids would do that to you.

This is the house where I grew up, which was build in the 30's after the 2-story house that my family had had for many years burned down. I grew up here. It was in the middle of the woods in Laurens County,South Carolina, on over 60 acres of land, with the nearest neighhbor, my Aunt Sallie, 1/2  a mile away at the end of a dirt road. We lived here with my grandmother when I was little, until she died when I was 8. My parents inherited the house and the land was divided up, but my father bought some from some of his 9 brothers and sisters, so he still had about 20 acres. He sold some to my mother's brother over the years, and when he died, in 1984, I inherited the house and 12 1/2 acres of land. When I moved, to Georgia, I sold it all to my cousin, because I wanted it to stay in the family. My son was 13 when we moved, and my daughter was 9. When I say I was a country girl, I was a country girl.

These are my parents in the 1940's, soon after they married. I never saw a picture of them together before I was born until Joe gave me this one. They were married for 11 years before I was born. The doctors told my mother she could not have children because of the damage done by her severe diabetes. Guess we showed them!

And here I am, with my father, the only photo I have of myself as a child. I was 4. My mother always dressed me up in white shoes and dresses with crinolines. I hated the crinolines because they scratched when you sat down. There was no comfortable way to sit in those dresses. But I was cute, huh?