More Photos from My Sister's Attic Part 4

by Glenn N. Holliman

Our trip through a box in my sister's, Becky Holliman Payne, attic continues.  These are odds and ends.  They are not in any order but each photograph tells a story of a different time and place.

To All:  My articles are scattered on various names of persons mentioned in my blogs below and in other Ancestry.com sites.  An archive of material may be found in the Records page of www.bholliman.com.

I want to begin with the picture below.  Can anyone help identify him?  Several clues here - one Damascus in the background.  From 1908 - 1910, my great grandparents, G.W. Washington and France Wilson Osborne owned a boarding house in that southwest Virginia town, not far Tennessee and North Carolina.

Notice this young, handsome man is sewing.  Is he a tailor?  A clothing store owner?  The fascinating advertisement for Bruner Woolens illustrates a pre-World War airplane.  Can any one help with the clothing styles?  Could this be Ward Wright, the brother of David Wright who married Pearl Osborne in 1912?

This picture was taken indoors when such pictures were usually studio shots.  The lighting is perfect, and we can enjoy the young man's snazzy bow tie and horizontal stripped socks!  He would do well to sweep the floor before the boss comes in.

The girl, second from left, in the white blouse is my great grandmother, Mayme Osborne (Stansbery) probably taken when she was 14 in 1910.  The setting appears to be in Damascus, Virginia, a village whose mountain rivers still overflow on occasion.  The other young ladies are unidentified.  Who does the hair of the girl on the extreme right? 

Mayme would move with her parents to Afton, Tennessee later in 1910 when she would meet and marry Charles S. Stansbery, Sr..  They married in 1914, with her father, G.W. Osborne conducting the ceremony.

Horse and buggy photographs, especially when this clear, can't be passed up.  Who is the chap in the seat?  He appears to be dozing with a bowler hat tilted to protect him from the sun.  In the meantime, the horse obliges with a stately pose.  Any information on person and place, most welcome.

And I will stop with these pictures....first is of my late Uncle Charles Stansbery, Jr. (1918-2006), age 6, in 1924 living in Bristol, Tennessee.  He looks like a living advertisement for Buster Brown shoes.  Charles, or 'Red' as he was know due to his red hair, joined the Army Air Corp in 1938, serving until the early 1960s. 

The second picture was taken 19 years later when Charles was home on leave in 1943.  It was a fortuitous leave.  During the three weeks home he met the love of his life, Anne D. Smith (Stansbery).  Caught up in the rush of war, they married after knowing each other only five weeks.  The marriage only latest until Anne's death in 2002!  A beautiful love story involving a Tennessee boy who was dressed as 'Buster Brown'.

 

Below, Charles and Anne Stansbery in 1975, no longer with a Buster Brown hair-do or an Army uniform.

 

 

 

 

For more information or to ask for an invitation, please contact Glenn N. Holliman at glennhistory@gmail.com.

K