Family Reunion 2007
I’m just back from family reunion. That meant a drive to the Texas panhandle, which I truly enjoyed. I forget how much I love the expansive sky and the seemingly limitless shades of green in the landscape. A turkey hen and her teen-aged brood crossed the road in front of me–she stood on the far edge of the pavement until they all scurried across. They went into a double row of trees that I suspect defined the boundaries of the old roadway–gratefully we have wider roads and wide shoulders these days.
Here’s one of the great things I found at the reunion. This is my great-grandfather, Charles Winfield Osborne. He died in 1926 so my dad, his grandson, never knew him. I’ve seen some other more informal pictures of him, in a group with his family of 10(!) children, but I think this one is great. I’m so grateful to have a copy.
And it doesn’t surprise me that he has on his hat for what is apparently a studio photo.
He was born in 1848 in Shelby County, near Memphis, Tennessee. In 1865, just after his father’s death, he moved with his mother and siblings to Grimes County, Texas. After he married Gertrude Susanna Mobley there in 1871, they proceeded to have 10 children, born in 5 different counties. In 1910, they were living in Lubbock County, Texas and by 1920, they’d moved a bit further north to Gray County, which was the site of the reunion.
This photo was taken, I’m estimating about 1911, so it was probably made in Lubbock County. (Don’t you love those sunglasses?) It includes all the surviving children, from the left, Inez, Wood, Walton, Fannie, Elizabeth, Thad, my grandfather, Eva, David, and Emmett. A 2-year-old son Raphael had died in 1877.