Louise

This week, after a patient wait of 35 years, I received the family photograph album. Although it did not contain the expected Bentley family pictures, it did contain pictures from my father's mother's side, the Orrs, Daniels, and Hales, in a spectacular collection of Daguerrotypes and other mostly formal portraits. This week I present my great-grandmother Louise.

Louise Daniels, born in 1867 or 1868 in Michigan, was the second child, the first girl, of Capt. Henry H. Daniels, of English descent, and Martha Louise Hale, who was reputedly from the line of the famed Nathan hale. Louise was my great-grandmother on my father's side -- his mother's mother.

A second girl, Alice, called Allie, was born in 1870.

In 1887, when she was just 20, Louise, now living in Colorado with her recent husband, prospector Gaylord A. Orr, gave birth to the first of two children, Jessie Louise Orr.

On the left you see Louise and Jessie. On the right you see Jessie in 1910 with her own firstborn, Dorothy Bentley, my father's elder sister.

Here's Louise with, I believe, her father Henry.

Here's the only photo of Louise I had ever seen prior to this week, with a grandson, shortly before her death in 1956, when I was two years old. We never met.

Be sure to visit Sepia Saturday for more antiquity!