52 Ancestors in 2018 - Week 2: Favorite Photo

Susie Janco - 1920
photo from the collection of Susie Petrini
digitized by KM Kolk - 2007

It’s hard for me to pick a ‘favorite’ anything. I get hung up on ‘I like this one a lot but is it REALLY better than that one? So instead of showing you a ‘favorite’ photo, I’m going to show you one I like a lot. This is a photo of my grandma, Susie Janco, posing in front of an airplane. Handwritten notes indicate this photo was taken in 1920, and other photos of Grandma in the same dress and hat, presumably taken on the same day, show her posing in what appears to be a city. As she lived in the St. Louis area around this time, I suspect this could be Forest Park.

The photo really maked me wonder about the story that goes with it. Was this the airplane of a barnstormer? Barnstorming was an early aviation practice in which a pilots would land his or her plane in random places and take passengers for a quick ride for a fee. Then they would move on to the next spot, often a farmer’s field. This was popular in the early 1920s.  This photo makes me wonder; did Grandma get on that plane? Or did she just pose next to it? If she did get in she never mentioned flying and as far as I know, she was never on a plane. And who is that in the shadows on the other side of the plane? At first I thought it was a shadow of Grandma on a backdrop, but I can see that the shoulders on the shadow are at an opposite slant. I wish I knew more about the circumstances behind this photo.

You can learn more about barnstorming in the 1920s here.
To learn more about my 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks project, read my introductory blog post.