Vintage Photo Friday Aunt Anna

This week we adopted a dog from a local pound.  The dog is a coonhound mix.  When I was looking through my old photos, I came across this one with my great aunt and her dog.  I believe by what I have learned recently about coonhounds -- this is one.  So in honor of the new dog (photos and blog post to come very soon) this is the photo for Vintage Photo Friday!

This is my Aunt Anna.  I remember her well.  She was a character!  She was born in 1888.  Her sister was my grandmother's mother.  Her husband was my grandmother's father's brother.  Follow that?  She and her sister married brothers.  This is such the way it was in older times and in the rural areas.  You did not know many people and it seems that sibling often did fix up other siblings.

When I was very little I remember her coming to my grandmother's house to visit and spend some time.  She would sit outside with me while I played under a tree.  I remember one day that she and I sat in my Uncle John's yard under a tree eating sugar cookies that I had made that morning with my grandmother.  

I always liked going to her house.  Her yard was filled with Lilly of the Valley and other flowers. There was an old stone walk up to her front porch.  She had so many cats -- they lived under her house.  She would fix pans of milk and bread for them and they would come running from all directions.    On the wall in her living room was a portrait of John Kennedy.  There was an upholstered stool in the room that I always chose for my seat when we visited.  I have that stool at my house now.  Also in the middle of the living room was a wood stove.

Many Saturdays my mother would take me to the beauty shop in town to meet up with my grandmother and Aunt Anna.  I had plans to go home with them to spend the night at my grandmother's.  Aunt Anna would have her hair done for church on Sunday.  Her hair was stark white and very striking.  

I like these older photos of her.  I never knew her without that bright white hair.  And I certainly never knew her to have a dog -- only cats.  This photo was taken at her house by the side porch.  Her washing machine used to sit out on that porch.  Her dryer was a clothesline.