I share another mystery this week with this photo of a young woman, date unknown sitting at an empty spinning wheel. Since there is no wool nor cotton wad (what would they call the stuff in process?) on the wheel to be spun into threads or yarns, I assume this photo was posed.
I rescued this lady of the past from my aunt's basement in PA last year when clearing out her home. I know it belonged to my Uncle John Irwin and I believe it is the same spinning wheel which we inherited from Uncle John and brought from PA and which sits silently in the corner of the study today. Several other places on this blog I have written some about my Uncle John Irwin and his family, most recently on March 2, 2010 about our Red Dragon Chair, also inherited from Uncle John Irwin. The following link can take you there or you can look at March, 2010 on the Archive sidebar on the left and click on Our Red Dragon.
http://patonlinenewtime.blogspot.com/2010/03/our-red-dragon.html
This photo is in an old wooden frame, (you can see part of it in the photo above) covered with glass but not in very good condition, somewhat faded. Removing it from the frame to scan would have been more of a challenge than I was prepared to tackle, so rather than scan, I took a picture of it. The heavy wooden frame is sealed on the back and enhanced with old nails bent over into the frame.
I think this spinner woman is an ancestor of Uncle John's mother, whose photo I share here, always known to me as Mrs. Irwin, Jessie Ayers Irwin was quite the grand dame, you can detect in her photo, that grandness, elegance which frightened me as a youngster who had to behave strictly in her prescence. Jessie Ayers Irwin whose family traces back to the Revolutionary War, well so do the Irwins, traveled extensively and had many treasures in her home, but she especially liked those from her own heritage. I recall the spinner photo from Mrs. Irwin's home when I visited her as a young child; it hung above the spinning wheel which she said was very old and used by her ancestors. Some day the photo of the Spinning Lady and the wheel itself will make it's way back to the Irwins, through Chris, John's grandson, who found me through this blog and the Dragon tale. We met in PA in May and I was able to give him family mementoes of the grandfather he never knew. But that is another tale that centers on the wonders of the internet.
It is really is a Sepia print in prime and maybe others have ideas as to the age of the photo. I took some of the spinning wheel today where it rests quietly, in it's retirement. There have been some repairs to it over the years, but Jerry who examines all antiques and especially anything made of wood is convinced this wheel must date back to late 1700's.
Oh if it could tell the stories of previous activity!
As always click on the title to this post to go to other Sepia posts from our international community.
