My great-grandfather, Robert Minor (1869-1943), was brought up on the family farm just outside the village of Garards Fort, Pennsylvania.  Just down the red-dog Ceylon Lane stood the sturdy brick home of his Uncle Samuel (1825-1909) and Aunt Louisa (1832-1917) Minor.  Sam and Robert’s dad, Marion Minor, were two of John P. and Isabella Minor’s sons, farming land  purchased in the 1820s from the Myers and McClelland families.

Sam and Louisa were married in 1852.  In the next eighteen years, Louisa gave birth to eight children, three girls and five boys.  Their eldest daughter, Isabella, died in childhood.  But the rest lived to thrive into adulthood.  At the time of this studio work, two boys, Jesse and John, had migrated to Taylor County, Iowa, where they settled among many other Greene County transplants.  Three boys, Friend, Sam, and William,  were finding their way in and around the farm, and the two girls, Mary Euna and Della, were still living at home. A teenage Robert would have known those cousins well, and would certainly have recognized Sam and Louisa as they are captured here in this set of 1885 portraits by Thomas W. Rogers of Carmichaels.

Annotations by Marilyn Minor Strickland.