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« on: Saturday 19 October 19 20:07 BST (UK) »
My mother grew up very poor in Arkansas and Illinois. This photo would have been taken in about 1929, probably in Gillespie, Illinois, a farm and coal mining town just east of St Louis. My mom, Orpha Garner, is the one in the middle back. She was born in 1918 in rural Arkansas. Her brother Leroy is on her left and her sister Esther is on her right. In front are her sisters Joyce and Shirley. By then their father (who would later die in a coal mine collapse) was a coal miner and they were visiting farming relatives probably outside Gillespie.
Thank you, Carol Ballard, Olympia, WA