Casline Family Blog -- Alan's Version: August 2009

What you might call the OLD FAMILY PHOTO ALBUM is a falling apart, torn up album with some very old photos, ca. late 19th and early twenty century. Much is unknown about the people pictured. I do not know where the album came from, how it passed into my mother's hands. My best guess is it was in her father's possession and came to her when her father died. Whether he was the last of his siblings alive when he died. I also do not know. I did talk to my mother, Georgianna and she identified those photos she could identify. There is of course much historical fodder and some nice groupings of photos where the people are identified. I also have a family tree that I wrote out and will need to hunt up if I am really starting out on this family history recording task. What I want to do here is copy and post everything found in the OLD FAMILY ALBUM. I have been avoiding getting started on this work cause I suspect it will be time consuming and I have enough projects going on. Maybe other people will contribute and make the project better.

NOTE: If you click on any photo below it will expand in size.

This is the front cover of the album. It is leather with printed gold ink. There is a metal (brass) clasp on the right hand side of the cover. The back cover is the same as this but in reverse. The album is approximately 11 inches by 8 inches. There are 16 pages inside for mounting photos (both sides equals 32 pages). These pages have precut openings some with one opening of either an oval or square shape, some with four squares(six pages). I count 46 photos either still in place or stuck within the albums covers. Some of these may have come from elsewhere and ended up here. I do not think this is the case with only one or two exceptions. I think these photos are the photos that were in the album.

This is the frontpiece for the album. There is no identifying information for the album itself. It is not a customized book but manufactured as a standard product. No copyright, no name of printer, no dates, names.

I'm starting with this photo. This is Fred Overrocker and Pearl Cole. Parents of Fritz Overrocker and Georgianna Casline (Overrocker). Grandparents for my generation and Great-grandparents for the next generation. The back of this photo shows printing that makes it useable as a post card. Looks like a cigar in his right hand. Grandpa smoked cigars and chewed tobbacco.

This is my grandfather, Fred G. Overrocker II, at a younger age. Looks to be a teenager, perhaps as a very young man. This photo comes from The Wheaton Studio, 30 & 32 E. Main St., Amsterdam, NY. You can see that on front of photo. There is no identification on back.

I think there are other copies of this photo around. I remember seeing it when I was a child. The comment from Georgie was "He looks like a girl but this is grandpa when he was a child. They used to do that, not cut their hair and dress the boys like girls when they were young" The context here is before the Beatles and hippies came along this is scandalously long hair for a boy. My brother Jeff and I had cool crewcuts and later duck-tails given to us by our uncle Dick Shea, a barber. A few of our baldysours(somebody look up this word and report back to me) were cut by grandpa when we were even younger by placing a bowl on your head and cutting everything left that showed. I think Rock got a few of grandpa's baldysours as well? The sailor suit and hat, long curly hair, I'm not good at ages, would you say around five years-old? The printing on the front says Cohoes, NY and a name, which is hard to read Meinerth? The back has an address written in pencil: Miss Pearl Cole, Fort Johnson, N.Y.

These are the only three pictures of Fred G. Overrocker II from the OLD OVERROCKER FAMILY ALBUM.