Catherine (McDonald) McKeown

The story of the photograph of Catherine (McDonald) McKeown

The photographs in Cooley lived in the sideboard in the dining room underneath where the radio used to be. There were also some photographs framed and on the walls or on the mantelpiece in the kitchen or the dining room. Photographs were added and removed over the years so it is difficult to remember back to the late 50s or early 60s and recall which photos were where.

In any event the main repository was under the radio. Some were in albums and some were loose. There was an ancient album with cut-out windows that never had very many photographs in it even though it was falling apart from either usage or age.

One of the albums, ‘Memory Lane’ was older and had older photographs in it. A second album was more modern, something my younger brother started to pull together in the mid-60s. I remember the older photographs, and who was in them, well. During my father’s last year, when he was over 97 years of age, I went through a lot of the photographs with him to confirm who the peo-

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ple in the photographs were and where they were taken. He was able to provide the information for nearly all the photographs even though a lot of them went back many years.

The photograph that I am going to write about is of Catherine Mc Donald, my great-grandmother. It was taken, as far as I know, in the back garden of her home in Greenore. The back of the photograph is a postcard. Unfortunately the postcard was trimmed to the photograph so some of the written information on the back of the photograph is lost. The sender’s name is missing but the partial address seems to be ‘Burton on Trent, Derbyshire’. The numbers 18 10 13 are on the back of the photograph which may well be the date: 18th of October 1913. Catherine would have been around 77 in 1913 and this age ties in with her appearance in the photograph. I think this was one of the loose photographs that lived in the drawer under the radio and I recall being aware of who was in the photo from a long time ago.

This a transcript of the postcard on the back of the photograph:

Burton on Trent Derbyshire 18 10 13 Dear Mrs Mc Keown I have at last mana(ged to) get you your photo finished. (I) hope you will like it. The (weather) here at present is very goo(d. Making) up for last week. Pleas(e ...)

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