12 Months of Photos December 2023 Favourite Photo

Question

December 2023 12 Months of Photos sharing theme: Favourite Photo

To participate, simply:

1. Choose a family photo that fits this week's theme.
2. Add it to this month's free-space gallery.
3. Reply with an answer below to let us know which photo you're sharing. If you want to include the photo but don't know how, click here.

The photo you share might be featured on the WikiTree home page and in our social media channels.

It is requested that no "best answer" stars be given to any photo, as they are all great pictures without exception and none should be preferred over the other.

Answer 1

My father Ole Jensen-17620, and his friend Peder Larsen-10287 took a trip to Banff National Park in Alberta in 1960. They stumbled upon this misshaped tree where Peder showed his "strength" while my dad snaped a shot.

Comments

Your Father is very creative Karen! Thank you for showing us his flair for photography and creating a wonderful impromptu shot.

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Thank you for your comment Marty.

Answer 2

This is a photo taken about 1928 of my great aunt Nora Long when she was a dancer in the Marcus Vaudeville Shows. 

She has written at the at the bottom—To my little sister Grace with love Nora. I have treasured this photo for 64 years; that is when I found it upstairs in my great grandparents dilapidated homestead home in western Oklahoma. 

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Long-12229

Comments

Nora are adorable as always what a beautiful lady ❤️thank you for sharing this sweet Alexis

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Susan, thank you for your comment. Like you, she always had sweet and kind things to say; she was a lovely lady.

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Nora is my 18th cousin once removed

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Beautiful picture Alexis, I can see why it is a favorite

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Alexis this is a truly awesome picture of your great-aunt! I can see why this would be among your favorite of your many treasures. The hand-written words of Love are a great bonus as well!

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I love this picture of Nora Long, Alexis, but what is even better is your outstanding profile of this fascinating woman.

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David, thank you for your comment and going to her profile.

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Vicki, I was able to acquire a second one of these photos, and my daughter has it in her living room. She stayed a week with Nora when she was eight; they picked lemons and made lemonade.

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Marty, thank you for your comment. I loved Nora, she was a treasure in my life as a child.

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Pat, thank you for your comment. I am so glad that you read her profile. Honestly, she is one of the reasons that I wanted to write biographies and become a part of WikiTree.

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It is amazing, Alexis, that you were able to find and preserve this wonderful photo of Nora.......after a year of pre-sorting our archive storage room, I peeked, again, into the documents that I first become aware of in the late 1950's.......I see more understanding, of remembered family history, as we tie it all together.

Answer 3

My father, John R. Miller, said this beloved photo of me with the head of a Tyrannosaurus in New York City's Natural History Museum was possible because I was transfixed and didn't move.  It was taken in 1958 and I am dressed like the girlish girl I was. I was not a Tomboy. What is so amazing to me today is how many children are fascinated by dinosaurs.  In my time it was most unusual for girls to like dinosaurs.  Even the boys weren't too interested.  They liked cowboys, rockets, sports, not dinosaurs.  As one of my classmates said.  They're all dead.  Who cares?  Do you see where this is leading?  Child loves researching dinosaurs who are dead, grows into senior who researches people who are dead.

Comments

What a great photo and analogy Pat! Thank you for sharing both of them with us.

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Thank you, Marty, for your comment.  I do see the similarities between hunting for fossils and hunting for records and bringing deceased things back to life or at minimum, proving they existed.

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Pat, as a youngster I took it upon myself to acquire and raise bantam chickens and thence, eventually to relate them to dinosaurs.

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Especially too, the big birds, John.  It's hard NOT to think of a dinosaur when you look at a Cassowary.

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I had to look up Cassowary......from raising bantam chickens, I had thought that dinosaurs would, also, be caring parents......these males dangerously so!

Answer 4

I usually don't like it when my photo is taken, but this photo from when I was about 2.5 years old is a favorite of mine.

I still have the teddy bear in  the picture, although I recently noticed it was shedding sawdust, so maybe some repair is in order

.

Comments

And......the proud parents are "Gert" and "Aad"!  

Answer 5

Of any photo I have shared this picture of my grandfather's aunts, uncles and cousins is the most popular with my distant cousins.

Given the interest in the photo I was trying to determine the date and location. Based on the group I guessed it was taken circa 1935 in either Chicago or Wisconsin. By pure chance I turned on a PBS show just as a very similar photo appeared of Baby Face Nelson (Gillis-1329) and a group of gangsters. That photo was taken in the early 1930's between Chicago and Wisconsin.

Imagine the time saved if random luck always gave you helpful hints about era and location specific history related to researching your family.

Comments

Gangster photo not posted due to copyright, but can be found at Source: https://video.wttw.com/video/geoffrey-baer-tours-northwest-of-chicago-with-geoffery-baer/ runtime 1:24:21/1:51:08 during discussion of Northwest Highway (US Route 14).

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For anyone interested in the history of Chicagoland, I recommend a collection of PBS (Chicago WTTW) shows that can be found online at https://interactive.wttw.com/geoffrey-baer-tours

Answer 6

This is one of my favorites, she's Ana Carrasco, my maternal grandmother. She loved classical music, cleaning, smoking, having coffee and playing card games. She passed away in 2007.

Comments

Vicki, you reminded me that my grandmother, Florence, enjoyed an occasional cigarette, as she traversed the world on ocean liners......in her later years I learned to roll one for her, as she and my father remembered old times, when we took her out to dinner.

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You had a pretty grandmother, Vicki.  Your description gave me a mental image of her cleaning while classical music was playing on the radio, and on a table there was a lit cigarette, smoke curling upward, ready for a quick puff, a half empty cup of coffee beside the ashtray and a deck of playing cards nearby.

Answer 7

Christmas 1981 at the Sunshine Coast of British Columbia......Kathy and I with family, bagging gift wrappings, when the children pushed us into a chair and snapped a photo.  It was special because my father, Grampa Thompson, had his blended family of 7 grandchildren together, while I cooked a turkey with sage and sausage stuffing, as he had taught me, and Kathy prepared her specialties.

Comments

John, this photo gave me a big Christmas smile. You and Kathy having fun and so happy together!

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Happy photo, John and a Merry 2023 Christmas to you.

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Thankyou Alexis and Pat......Kathy and I wish you both and, as well, our WikiTree friends, a Merry Christmas. 

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John, a very Merry Christmas to you and Kathy!

Answer 8

This is a recent favourite photo I have un earthed it is of my 3rd Great Grand Father John Nash's Soda Factory in Halifax, Nova Scotia circa 1880 

I know very little of his life before he came from Ireland to Halifax.  In Halifax he became a merchant and had the license of a recipe of Ginger Ale from Ireland.  He was a prominent merchant and served as an alderman on the Halifax City Council.  His son John Nash was the first Northwest Mounted Police (later became RCMP) contable reported as being killed in the line of duty. The skills of running a soda plant and the working with pipes were passed down as his son, grandson and great grandson (my Grandfather) worked as pipe fitters at the Halifax Shipyards.

Why this is one of my favourite photos is that it is a familiar location to myself from my years living in Halifax, though the building was long gone and has since been replaced with the City's Hockey Arena (Halifax Metro Center) I can pick out a few buildings in the background .  This picture is a link to a city that had an important part in shaping who I am today and this photo shows likewise my family's role in shaping the early history of the City. 

Comments

Brian, I studied the photo with great interest, as my mother's Boak and Umlah ancestors were involved in Halifax at the time, also, my father's father served in the NWMP for a time.

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Umlah's were "neighbours" of my father's family when they had moved from the Downtown/Northend of the City out to Spryfield.

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My 2nd ggf, Richard, lived in the Northend and his father, William, in Goodwood, with various family members residing in Spryfield, the town I had observed, previously, on your father's profile.   The Umlahs mentioned have far more members, still to enter, than I have fingers and toes to count on.