Sepia Saturday 651. Thirteenth in a series of family history stories related to the 1950 U.S. census.
One of the people living in my family’s Gloverville, N.Y., household during the 1950 US census was my mom’s younger sister Rita Mary Laurence.
Born in 1929, Aunt Rita was three years younger than my mom — Peg (Laurence) Charboneau — and was regularly connected to our family until she moved to California in the early 1960s.
As discussed in a previous post, Aunt Rita, 21, was listed as “OT” for other in the occupation column of the 1950 census. The reason? She was attending college to become a blood bank technician.
I don’t have photos of her from that year. But in 1952 Aunt Rita joined Mom, Dad and me on a trip to Boston, Mass., and my avid-photographer dad snapped a few shots. Luckily one of them is a great match for this week’s Sepia Saturday prompt of a formidable woman standing on her own.
The Boston vacation trip
Cape Cod has long been a family vacation destination. My maternal grandparents Liz (Stoutner) and Tony Laurence used to take Mom and Aunt Rita there. Later my parents took our family there when the GE plant where my dad worked shut down for two weeks every summer.
But I’m not sure how my mom, dad, Aunt Rita and I ended up at the beach in Boston in 1952 — in fact I only know the location because my dad told me once when we were going through these photos. Whatever the reason, it appears to have been a fun trip for all involved.
Mystery on-deck photo
One photo from the trip (above) is a bit of a mystery. My mom and Aunt Rita appear to be onboard a ship — perhaps the ferry to Provincetown, which runs regularly out of Boston.
They are wearing coats and scarves, and there are no other tourists, so it may have been a spring or fall trip. Was the ship docked in port? Or was this a restaurant designed to look like a ship? Or perhaps a dry-docked ship turned into a restaurant? My dad was in the Navy, so I’m inclined to think it’s a ship, where he posed my mom and her sister for the photo.
I found one photo (below) of a Provincetown ferry — the S.S. Governor Cobb that ran from 1937-1945 — which looks like it might be the ship they are standing on, or similar to it. Could it have been put in dry dock for tourists to flock over after it’s useful life was done?
Off to the beach
Clearly, it was too cool on my family’s 1952 Boston trip for anyone to go into the water…or was it? Apparently not for me!
“You loved the ocean,” Dad told me when we found this photo.
While the adults — and apparently every other tourist to in Boston at the time — stayed off the beach and away from the water, I was game to go in at age 2!
Luckily, my parents were sensible enough to put a plaid flannel shirt over my bathing suit. So there I am having a great time wading in the water. And is that a beach pail back there on the sand? I’m guessing some sand-castle-building and shell-collecting went on as well.
Altogether, these photos capture my young, post-war extended family heading into the future. My mom, dad and Aunt Rita were all college graduates — the first in their families and an inspiration for me and my siblings.
Mom and Aunt Rita were also headed for careers, unlike previous generations of my women ancestors — opening new doors for girls like me to walk through. So I am delighted to have these photos of my family on the cusp of these social changes.
New post next week. Please stop back. Meanwhile, please visit the blogs of this week’s other Sepia Saturday participants.