Sepia Saturday 661. Beginning a periodic series on beloved pets that came along for the ride on the family journey.
Genealogy and family history are all about human heritage – ancestors, descendants, collateral relatives, and the generations of interaction among them.
Sometimes overlooked are the beloved family pets that come along for the ride and continue to evoke special memories even decades after they’re gone.
A hound joins our household
A Sepia Saturday photo prompt of a young girl with a terrier reminded me of my family’s first pet – a black and brown hound dog we called Folly.
She was with us during my early childhood in the 1950s, when we lived on a farm near Altamont, N.Y., with my maternal grandparents Tony and Liz (Stoutner) Laurence — known to us as Gramps and Boom.

Delving into the family photos, I was pleased to find three pictures of Folly with my family members. I called my brother Mark to see what he could recall about our first dog.
“Well, her full name was actually Norman’s Folly, because Dad was the one who wanted a dog,” Mark said. “Here he was commuting to work every day, and with three young children, but he still wanted a dog.
“The dog may have started out with another name, ” he added, “But Mom, Boom and Gramps started calling the dog Norman’s Folly. Eventually, it got shortened to Folly, and that’s what we called her.”

Why did Dad want a dog?
Why was my dad so intent on having a dog? Maybe it was the first time since his childhood that the circumstances were right.
Growing up in the Adirondack community of Otter Lake, N.Y., Dad had a dog named Sheik. At some point, though, Sheik tangled with someone’s pet or domestic animal and, as a result, had to be put down – an upsetting experience for Dad.
After that came Dad’s high school years, college, the Navy, marriage to Mom and a couple of apartments in New Jersey and Gloversville, N.Y., that were unsuitable for pets. But when we finally settled at Whispering Chimneys, our 10-acre farm, the time was apparently right to have a dog once more.
From a child’s perspective, I remember Folly as huge – and she certainly appears that way in the photos, standing tall next to my younger brothers. But she was also warm, friendly, and easy going – the perfect pet for a group of young children. And the country setting gave her the freedom to cavort all over.

Memories of Folly
Funny story: My music-teacher mom (Peg) used to whistle from the porch for us kids to come in from playing. She claimed whistling carried farther than shouting.
“Then how did you used to call Folly?” I once asked her.
Mom laughed. “I had one whistle for you kids and another whistle for the dog,” she said, puckering her lips to demonstrate. Apparently we and Folly could easily tell the difference!
Folly was part of our immediate family from around 1951 until we moved to the suburbs near Binghamton, N.Y., in 1956.
Deemed too large to squeeze into our small, new Cape Cod-style house, Folly stayed behind with Boom and Gramps on the large, spacious farm.
We kids were always excited to see her during holiday visits – until one fateful visit when she was not longer there.
In our absence, Folly had galloped away from this life into the world of our fond memories — and that’s where she lives on to this day.
New post soon. Please stop back. Meanwhile, please visit the blogs of this week’s other Sepia Saturday participants.
© 2023 Molly Charboneau. All rights reserved.
Great story! That is one lovable looking hound, and I love the name Folly!
When I married my husband he had an Irish Setter named Schoen. I’d never been around dogs much and, in fact, because of a couple of bad experiences with dogs, didn’t really like them, so I was a little dubious about actually living with one. But Schoen was a lovely, gentle, well-trained dog and it hardly took any time at all for us to become fast friends & as our children came along, she thought they were born just for her to watch over & play with. Over the years, besides dogs, we’ve had cats, birds, a white rat, a hamster, turtles, goldfish . . . and they all had names & we loved them all. It’s hard to imagine not having a pet to love. 🙂
This was a wonderful tribute to share. My family has many, many animal stories, so I can remember the names of each dog, cat, hamster, bird, etc. that each had a story to tell. But when I look at photos from earlier generations I’m stumped for the names of pets as they were rarely recorded. Dogs and cats are special markers in life, often bridging the ages of childhood to teenage to adulthood, measuring time from young to old.
Folly sounds like the perfect dog for a family.