So my sister and I were going through old family photos recently, and look what we came across!
A photo of "Kepner Reunion, Sept. 22, 1901" !!
Unfortunately, we don't have any "key" to the photo, to know who any of the people are.
The only thing it says on the back is:
H.E.Sewell
Photographer
Galveston, IND.
So we don't even know for sure that the reunion was held in Galveston. But given that a great many Kepner's ended up in Carroll County (just West of Galveston) and many seemed to have come to Hamilton County (Northeast of Indianapolis), it does seem like a likely location. I believe there was train or even interurban service between Indianapolis and Kokomo, for example.
Anyway, Galveston, IN, is on the road from Kokomo to Logansport (U.S. Hwy 35), at the intersection with State Hwy 18 (from Delphi and Flora), in the far Southeast corner of the county.
The one person I do believe I have picked out in the photo is my great-great grandmother, Mary Nancy Kepner Gardner. She was born Nov 23, 1841, and died Oct 30, 1921. (She lived to see my mother, her great-granddaughter, born in April, 1921.)
I believe that she is in the front row of seated figures, the fourth from the right (the leftmost of four women seated there). So... Does anyone have any idea who any of the other figures are? Particularly the patriarch who is seated just to her right (our left) in the wicker chair?
Bill Wilkinson16 Jan 2004 - Added the "patriarch with the beard, sitting in the wicker chair" is Samuel Kepner, eldest child of Jacob Kepner and Mary Magdaline Groninger. On his left (our right) is his sister, Mary Nancy Kepner Gardner. He was 20 years older than she, so the difference in ages in the photo is real.