I had often wondered why the picture of my great-grandmother, Lydia Raser

Hendrix Snavely, was taken outside her house with her standing beside a table with table scarves and some sort of adornment on it. She is dressed in a Gibson Girl blouse with tie and a long, full, belted skirt of the day and the scene is beside a not-too-modern house.

My uncle had written on the back that the picture probably was taken in the early 1920s at the farm home of Jim and Lydia Snavely somewhere between Bells and Whitewright. Background for the picture is cotton still on the stalks and a corn field in the distance.

He (R.C. Vaughan) wrote that he remembered spending a week with "Grandma and Grandpa Snavely" while still a small boy. "After supper, we would sit on the porch while Grandma and Grandpa smoked their corncob pipes," he wrote.

It always seemed strange to me that they would move a table and all its adornment out into the yard for the picture to be taken by a traveling photographer.

I had sent the picture to a relative doing genealogy research and she wrote back that she, too, noticed that Lydia was photographed with a table and lovely things she had brought from inside her home. Then she remembered seeing other old photos where families were photographed outside with some of their personal items.

My relative reasoned that it was customary for people to take all their finer possessions out in front of their home whenever a photographer came around to shoot family pictures. Children also were outfitted in their Sunday best, which did not necessarily include shoes, as they were considered a great luxury during this time.

A photo of the David Hilton family near Sargent, NE accompanied my relative's note. It seemed that Mrs. Hilton and her eldest daughter were adamant that they not be photographed in front of their sod house because they wanted to send copies of the picture to friends and relatives elsewhere and thought it embarrassing to be seen living in a house of dirt.

They did, however, want to be seen with their new pump organ, so they made Mr. Hilton and the photographer drag the organ out of the house for the photographs, then drag it back inside again.

I guess that's why Grandma Snavely wanted her nice table outside with her.

I've always been fascinated with early day pictures. The men and women always looked so stern and never smiled. Guess it was because it took so long for the photographer to get ready to actually shoot the picture.

I have a box full of early day photographs that I acquired from both my grandmothers. Unfortunately many of the old photos are not identified. Some I have been able to put a name to, but some of the precious children still remain identified. I recently took a small sack full of unidentified pictures to an antique store with the hope that someone might recognize someone or at least want to claim my unnamed friends as their relatives.

I have purchased pictures in antique stores several times myself. Not because I needed more relatives, but because I just liked the photograph or maybe the ornate chair, the old automobile, the beautiful dress or the man's "highwater" suit with the legs striking him several inches above his ankles. They all tell stories and wouldn't you love to hear some of them.

Grandma Snavely came to Texas from Missouri in the late 1800s with her husband John L. Hendrix, who died when he was in his forties. He left her with eight children to raise. She married Jim Snavely, who also had several children and they scratched out a bare living in the Bells area, renting and cultivating this or that farm on the halves or thirds or fourths that was a way of life for many rural families.

With the large families and ages all the way up from toddlers to teenagers, Everyone in the family helped with the crops, hoeing the cotton and corn, picking the cotton and gathering the corn.

There was no doubt that the Snavelys lived in a house with dirt floor and I'm sure that's why she wanted to be photographed outside.

I always remember my grandmother telling me that she never heard her mother and stepfather call each other anything but "Mr. Snavely," and "Miz. Snavely," never by their first names. The Hendrix children always called him Mr. Snavely too until they were grown, then they changed it to Dad Snavely.

I didn't mean to get away from the photographs that this column concerns, but now you know a little bit about one branch of my family tree.

There's just one thing I would like to add and that is the importance of identifying photographs. Writing this column and looking for pictures to accompany it is a lot of fun, but it would be so much simpler if people had just put a date on the back of some of the historical ones.

DONNA HUNT is a former editor of The Denison Herald. She lives in Denison and can be contacted at d.hunt_903@yahoo.com.