Old Family Photos: Mystery Child, Part 2

Last week I shared Jacqueline Curry’s 1910s mystery photo of a woman and a young child. The family identification didn’t hold up.

Several people commented that the tot could be a boy. I’m waiting for a bit more family information from Jacqueline to help answer that question, but it certainly is possible. In the early 20th century, little boys wore dresses until about the age of 5.

Jacqueline’s great-great-grandmother Harriet, born in 1862 in Sussex, England, would be about the right age to be the mother. In this photo, she’s facing away from the camera so that it’s difficult to see her face.

From Jacqueline’s family tree, here are two candidates for the woman and child in our mystery photo:

• Harriet Day, born 1862

• Her daughter Elsie, born in 1902. (Another daughter, Dorothy, born in 1891, is definitely not in the photo.)

Here are a other photos of these folks for comparison:

A lovely day at the beach in the 1930s for Harriet and her granddaughter Jeanne. Jeanne is Elsie’s daughter, born in 1931.

Elsie and her future husband Thomas at the time of their engagement.

Solve your family photo mysteries with these books by Maureen A. Taylor: