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| A.H. and Caroline Smith, 1868 |
For Mother’s Day this year,
here is a Carte de visite (albumen
process) from 1868 of my great-great-grandmother Caroline Daugherty Smith with
her husband and first two children.
Caroline was two months from
her fifteenth birthday when she married the German farmer next door. Her 14th and last child was
born in 1885 when she was 40. In
between, there was the War between the States, Reconstruction in Texas,
Comanche raids, the great herds of longhorns going north out of Texas (her
half-brother Charlie Goodnight gave his name to the Loving-Goodnight Trail),
bank failures, depressions, railroads criss-crossing the land, and over it all
the day-to-day struggle to raise a family.
God bless her, and all
mothers today.
