Young Jeanette Rapp

Jeanette Rapp as a youth.

This is one of the finer photographs that I have been fortunate enough to become curator of since I started this project. It came to me recently from my mother, but I believe it came only recently to her too, as relatives “back East” are gradually going through things that belonged to my grandparents. There is no date given, but my cousin Joe, an expert in historic photo forensics, says given Jeanette’s birth year of 1889 or 1890, he guesses that this might be 1902 or 1903.

John Henry Rapp

John Henry Rapp, master cigar maker, entertainer.

I have no date or location for this photo of my great great grandfather John Henry Rapp, but he was born in 1858 so you can do your own assessment; to me he looks about 60 here, so maybe this photo was taken during or a bit after the First World War.

Jeanette (Rapp) Dowell with granddaughter Barbara Dowell

My mother Barbara in the late 1930s with her “Nanny”.

Here is my mother as a child walking with her paternal grandmother, Jeanette (Rapp) Dowell, probably in Charleston, South Carolina. Though the metadata doesn’t say, I would put this photo sometime in the winter of 1938-39, when my mother was two and a half.