Good day, all, & a happy Sepia Saturday & May Day to you! I’m a bit late this morning, as life has been hectic over the past few days—which has also meant that I’ve fallen behind on blog visits. I’ll endeavor to rectify this over the weekend.
Up to now, both as a Sepia Saturday participant & as part of my own series prior to that, I’ve concentrated on my father’s old photos. He was an avid amateur photographer & I have quite a few of his photographs. However, on my recent trip to the east, my mother gave me one of her old photo albums—in fact, the photos in that album date from the late teens & early 20s. I’ll start with the photos from that book next week, but by way of introduction today, I’m posting a photograph of my maternal grandfather, Joseph Atkinson.
Joseph Atkinson was Canadian by birth—he was born in New Brunswick in 1868; his wife, my grandmother, née Inez Putnam, was considerably younger than him, as she was born in Taunton, Massachusetts in 1881. Joseph Atkinson didn’t play a role in either my life or my sister’s life, as he died of a stroke in 1946, two years before my sister was born & 10 years before my birth.
My mother has always spoken of her father in quite glowing terms, tho her stories about him do—in my opinion—portray him as stern to a fault. Joseph Atkinson was Scottish in heritage, tho I don’t know when his family emigrated to Canada. Joseph became a ship’s captain, & as a young man moved to the Washington, D.C. area. He would have been 48 years old when my mother was born in 1916.
I do know that Joseph liked to fish—as one would assume from this photo!—in that, interestingly enough, he was very much like my father; he also, as we can see, smoked a pipe—another habit he shared with my dad. Joseph also played the banjo! Sadly, the only story I know about his banjo playing is that my uncle, Joe Jr. broke the head on the banjo while playing as a small child. For some reason, Joseph never had the banjo head replaced—an odd fact, since that’s usually a relatively minor procedure.
Hope you enjoy the photo & the introduction to Joseph Atkinson, & be sure to check out other Sepia Saturday participants at this link.