UlysAnnie album, page 1

 Okay, I'm going to change horses in the middle of the stream -- for no apparent reason. I'm going to start posting pages from the very first album I finished putting together after I first inherited the treasury of family photos. It's the album that chronicles my great-grandparents, Ulysses and Annie Arnold Hicks, and their nine offspring. The reason it was the first is because Ulys was a photographer and actually took a huge chunk of all the pictures in my collection. Also -- and probably more importantly -- these were the people who formed the milieu of my childhood, to a much greater extent than any other group. The Hicks offspring, most of whom lived near us in my growing-up years, constituted BY FAR the greatest influences that shaped my personality, my core belief system, and my sense of identity. This feels like my Tribe. (And since the people who follow this blog are almost all members of that same tribe...)

It is likely that I will go ahead and make a book from this album. Most of the family writings I have in my possession also came from this tribe; and although I have used most of them in previous books, there are some that bear repeating, and still a few writings that I have not used yet. I will be posting the digital version that I created from the original scans of the hard-copy photo album. And I hope my readers will keep in mind that I welcome any comments and opinions you might have. (Your commentary might make valuable contributions to the book!)

So, here we go...

Ulysses Fillmore Hicks married Bertha Ann 'Annie' Arnold

22 February 1910

Ulysses Hicks and Annie Arnold 1910

Ulys

Annie

Ulys. I have no idea what he was doing sitting in this hole, nor why someone took a picture of him doing it. But I'm sure it seemed like a good idea at the time.

According to what's written on the back of the photo, this picture was taken some time in the early 1960s. Looks like maybe they had just finished a picnic.