So Vintage It's Contemporary

As I'm scanning our family's negatives and slides, I am finding images I've never seen before - every single one is a treasure. This one stopped my in my tracks and had me staring at my computer screen in amazement.  

This image is from the early 1940s. These are sisters - my Mama is on the left and Aunt Nancy is on the right.

A Visual Story

My sister found all this  tucked away in a box on a high shelf in a cabinet in our mother's garage.  We had all been on the lookout for the slides - we knew they were somewhere in the house.  However, we had no idea there were also negatives in the box!  Rose entrusted the box of slides and negatives to me with my pinky-sworn promise to have them all scanned, digitized, and loaded onto a medium to be shared.

100 Years - An Insider's View

For anyone who watches HGTV's "Fixer Upper", your eye might dart past the caskets to the back right corner while you squeal, "Shiplap!!!"  For the rest who don't watch the show, you are definitely missing out. Ok, initial excitement and longing for that shiplap to use in my current house aside, this is the basement of the "old, old" funeral home.

My sisters were all too young to remember anything about the building, so I am putting all my interior photographs together so that we can "walk" into the building where our family's business began.

100 Years - Our Point of View

Yesterday, it was announced that 2016 is the 100th anniversary of the business of Dunn Funeral Home.  Believing that pictures are indeed worth a thousand words, the FB post inspired me to illustrate some of the highlights included in yesterday's announcement.

This first photograph is a slide, taken by Eugene Denney, our dad, and  recently discovered by my sister, Rose, and her daughter, Hannah.  This is, by far, the best image of the funeral home I have seen.  As a little girl, it seemed like a magnificent building.  It still does. 

Photographic Treasure

Love it when I find an unexpected treasure! This store was owned by Ephraim Miller and his brother, George. In the 1880 Census, George, our great-great-grandfather, is listed as being a store clerk, which give us some idea of the age of this photograph.

Look at the boy riding the calf on the lower left of the photograph.  He has a dog riding behind him. There's the treasure!

Civil War Bodyguard

Our great-great grandfather was William Hayden.  He was born in Virginia in 1844 and by 1850 was living with his family in Ohio.  He became a soldier in the 1st Ohio Infantry and fought at the Battle of Stones River in Murfreesboro, TN, where he was wounded and hospitalized.  

The images in this post are from Stones River Battleground in Murfreesboro, from research at the Tennessee State Library and Archives, and from Fold3.com.

House of Cannon

Notes from Pete Cannon identify this as the home of John Cannon, a home which has since burned. Although the porch is different, I am wondering whether it is the same house in the photo below, taken in approximately 1892, of the Hayden and Cannon families.

I recognize William Hayden, holding the baby (center of the photo).  This man is our great-great grandfather and I have been digging into his history recently.  He served on the Union side during the Civil War as a bodyguard. Found some wonderful information at the Tennessee State Archives about him - expect a separate post about his military service.