Aren’t these sidewalk footprints the cutest thing? They are somewhere around 75 years old.
I’ve lived in my house for 26 years. The house was built c. 1946 by one of the ‘founding families’ in our county/small town. One of the additions (neighborhoods) in our town is named after this family. The sidewalk was laid at the time the house was built. I know this because of the assessment pictures in the paperwork for the house show this sidewalk in the earliest assessment picture.
The owners who built my house had two daughters. I’m guessing these footprints belong to one of those little girls.
Over the years, I’ve asked people in town who might remember the original owners of this house about these footprints, but no one remembers anything about the girls other than to confirm the family had two girls. As luck would have it, I mentioned I was using the footprints picture in a blog article today, and my husband said he vaguely remembers hearing a story that the dad in the family didn’t want his girls to grow up in this county and marry a poor farmer, so he sent the girls away to attend school somewhere else far away. They didn’t, in fact, return here and settle down.
The dad would have lived through the Dust Bowl years, and this county/town is smack dab in the center of the ‘bowl’. It was a rough time for people here. The dad was a banker and did some real estate business, which is where he made enough money to leave a legacy in the form of a substantial educational scholarship fund for county graduates to apply for every year for at least the past 50 years.
John at Journeys with Johnbo hosts Cellpic Sunday.
Until we meet again,
I love your tradition of creating plaster cast handprints of the little ones in your family. It’s not too expensive. It doesn’t end up stored in a box. It takes up very little wall space. It’s just right. Those are the best kinds of mementos.
The Dust Bowl coinciding with the Great Depression was a terrible time for so many people. Kansas and Oklahoma were also caught in the devastation of the Dust and Depression. Ugh. That’s so sad that your mom’s family had to leave and they never returned to their home.
That’s so incredible and neat! I love the footprints, and to think they may have belonged to one of the little girls is so endearing.
When I was 5, my handprint was made in some plaster of paris. It hung on my parents’ wall for years until I was grown and moved out to start my own family. So, when each of my children turned 5, I did their handprints. Now they all line the wall in our home in the library.
I love old things, and I love ideas like the footprints you have there.
That’s very interesting about the family you mentioned. I enjoyed reading about them so much. My grandma lived through the dustbowl as a young farmgirl in Kansas. When it got to the point her family had to leave, they loaded what they could bring with them. The rest of the furniture was locked in an upstairs bedroom, then they left, never to return. She spent the rest of her girlhood and young adulthood in California.
Thank you for posting this. 🙂