Favorite Photo Of A Female Ancestor

Today's Women's History Month blog prompt from Lisa Alzo is:

Post a photo of one of your female ancestors. Who is in the photo? When was it taken? Why did you select this photo?

My great-grandmother, Lillian Elsa Noack, was 25 years old when she got married but then her husband immediately left to serve in World War One. For the next three years she continued living with her parents in Dallas, Texas. And though they were now married, with both of their husbands off to war, she and her younger sister, Selma, continued to travel around the United States visiting family and making new friends - a past time that led them to meet the men they married in the first place - and a trait I blame for my own wanderlust. Lillian and her husband were finally reunited after the war and welcomed their first child in the fall of 1920.

I recently inherited three very large scrapbooks my great-grandmother kept from 1915 to 1932. There are over 1700 pictures in the pages of these treasured books. So you can see how it would be hard to pick a favorite. There is one she took of her mother-in-law (my great-great-grandmother) with HER mother-in-law (my great-great-great-grandmother). I love that one. There's one of Lillian and her younger sister dressed up like men and playing dice in the dirt. Too funny! There are pictures of her with her parents and older sisters, her nieces and nephews and cousins. Pictures taken in California and Colorado, Texas and Ohio. There's even one of her standing on top of a train car with some friends.

But, as I was looking through the pictures again this morning two small, candid shots caught my eye - and my heart. One of Lillian's much older cousins named his daughter Lillian. In the late summer of 1919 the two Lillians met. And from what I can tell - they became friends.

I absolutely love being an aunt. Though I don't get to spend much time with them, I ADORE my nephews and my niece. So, while this little girl is - technically - a younger cousin and not a niece, something about these pictures captured my imagination.

In a day and time when many women married young and had children quickly, I often wonder how my great-grandmother felt about being a little older when she got married. I wonder how she felt about her husband being off to war. Did she worry that he might never come back to her? Did she worry that if he did he might be harmed or damaged in such a way that she might never be a mother? She had siblings with children and was - if the pictures can be believed - constantly surrounded by family. Did she love being an aunt as much as I do?