These people are my paternal grandmother and her siblings. The photo was taken in 1907. I love the way the children are grouped. The oldest child is 16. What is she thinking as she looks off to the side, away from the camera and her little sisters and brothers? Someday she would be married but she never had children. My grandmother, who was 14 at the time, holds the baby of the family on her lap and has her arm around the youngest boy.
I knew all these girls. I had plenty of time to get to know them, since each lived into her 90s. The baby lived the longest, dying shortly before her 96th birthday. The boys moved to the East and West coasts long before I was born so they were only names to me. I met the oldest boy once, the one for whom my father was named, but to me he was an elderly stranger who was visiting his roots.
If you click on the photo, it will get large enough for you to notice the rings, the choker, the watch fob (I think that's what is attached to the lad's lapel). A key point of E.M. Forster's novel Howards End is the human need to connect. I connect with these pairs of young eyes, no matter which way they are looking.