Christmas - 1948

This photo was taken sixty years ago at the home of my great-grandparents, Richard and Ethel Ketner at Sylvan on Fox Island, Washington.

These are my parents--Ethel Shoemaker and Eugene Rutland--two month before they got married. This was my Dad's introduction to the Ketner clan. I guess it went well as my parents will be celebrating their sixtieth anniversary this coming February.

What I love about old photograph is the chance to look into the past and see the details of daily life. Like the old radio behind the couch, the piano and the old-fashioned Christmas tree. Getting a glimpse into a 1940's home is fascinating.

Most of my photos from before the mid-1940's are taken outdoors, which leads me to surmise that flash photography only become widely accessible to the amateur after that time.

Wedding - 1880

These are my grandma's grandparents on their wedding day in La Mars, Iowa in 1880.

Willard Tabor Payne was born in Williamstown, Vermont on August 13, 1849. His family moved west when he was three, eventually ending up in Mankato, Minnesota. A branch of the Payne family still lives in that area.

I don't know what led him to La Mars, Iowa, but assume that was where he met my great-great-grandmother, Lydia Ella Burgess, who had been born in La Mars on November 29, 1857. Their daughter, Ethel Caroline--future motherof Merle and my own great-grandmother, was born in La Mars on April 11, 1882.

Shortly thereafter, Willard returned with his family to in St. Paul, Minnesota. The family moved west from St. Paul to Tacoma, Washington in 1891, following close on the heels of the first direct rail link between Minnesota and the Pacific Northwest.

Willard and Lydia built a home in Tacoma and lived out the rest of their lives there.

Willard died September 19, 1917 in Tacoma. His wife, Lydia, died July 20, 1920.

One Small Thread in the Tapestry of Life

I was born on Christmas Eve in 1904. My parents, Richard Ambrose Ketner, Jr. and Ethel Caroline Payne Ketner, welcomed me with love and surrounded me with love all their lives.

The event took place at 611 South L Street in Tacoma, Washington. I wasn't much interested in the place of my birth at the time but it was later pointed out to me, a little "salt-box" of a cottage set atop a high bank in what was then the outskirts of a young town. Later the property was graded down level with the street and a bank was built there.

My earliest memory--or maybe it's part memory and part feeling--was at my Grandparents Payne's house. They had a narrow two-and-a-half story house on South 9th near K Street which had a wooden stoop or porch on one side that was about four feet off the ground. There was a way to get under the porch from the dirt-floored basement. I remember going in under the porch, sitting there and watching the dust-motes dancing in the sun rays that came through the cracks in the porch floor.

I must have been two-and-a-half years old at the time. Aunt Vera had a snap-shot of herself and me on that porch taken about that time. I don't remember anything more about it--whether I was hiding there for some reason or whether it was a favorite place.

(from the notes of Merle Gilman Ketner Shoemaker)

Merle

Merle Gilamn Ketner
Age 8 about 1912
Tacoma, Washington

I began this journal as a place to share old photos and family history. I named it after my grandmother, Merle Gilman Ketner Shoemaker, who nurtured my love of genealogy.

When I look at this photo, I can see the person that Merle would become, the face that was to become so dear to me a half-center later. She remains with me now, over thirty years since I last saw or spoke with her--a part of me and the icon of a person I would like to be.

This journal is an act of love for this girl and the woman she would become.