Later Copy Of An Earlier Photograph: Harrison Tidd, William Tidd (In The Goat Cart), And Two Unidentified Family Members
William Tidd, whom I knew late in his life as "Poppy," was the father of my mother's second husband, Harold Tidd and the grandfather of my three step-brothers. I found a packet of Tidd family photos, which I've given to my stepbrother Jeff, but he let me keep this photo, and told me to send him a scan. When I saw the photograph, I knew pretty much instantly that the boy in the goat cart was a Tidd. He could be my stepfather as a young boy, he could be Jeff as a young boy, and he could even be Jeff's son David as a young boy. The other boy, wearing the tie, is Harrison, William's brother. I don't know what, or if, Harrison had a nickname, but Jeff tells me that everyone called Poppy "Red." Everyone, that is, except the Tidd boys. When I knew Poppy later in life (and I don't remember ever having a conversation with him, or doing anything other than nodding hello.) he was an unassuming gentleman, thin and not terribly outspoken, whose most distinctive characteristic was that his right (I think it was his right) arm was missing. He always wore a long-sleeve shirt that was pinned-up at the shoulder. He spent his life working for the Pennsylvania Railroad, and began working for them as a teenager, as a brakeman. Jeff says that he was between two cars (freight train, passenger train?) and that the conductor gave the engineer clearance to move the train but that Poppy was not clear. He got caught between the cars, and there went his arm. He was sixteen or seventeen years-old. (Lewis Hine has a famous photograph of a young millworker who lost an arm in a loom. If you can find that photo, you can imagine Poppy Tidd as a young man).
Poppy continued to work for the railroad for the rest of his working life. I guess that was better than not working at all---perhaps that allowed him to maintain his self-respect. I never heard about any particular bitterness that he held towards his employers----maybe he wasn't so happy with that conductor who made a bad decision.
What I also learned when Jeff saw this photograph is that, at a certain age, but still as teenagers, Poppy and Harrison stopped speaking to each other, and never spoke again throughout their lives. Their mother apparently had several husbands, and when she divorced their father, one of the boys stayed with the mother, and one of the boys went with the father. Apparently that decision left bad feelings on both sides. Jeff said that his father was told by Poppy that they had no relatives living in southeastern Ohio---that the Tidds living there were only distantly related. And then when Harrison grew up and married he divorced his first wife and remarried and established a second family, and THOSE half-brothers and sisters were told the same thing---that they had no close relative living in the vicinity. So in that little corner of the world, in a radius of thirty or forty miles. there were all sorts of Tidds living amongst each other, all being told that they weren't related. It's a story almost Biblical in its resonance.
And it's nice to have a Goat Cart Photograph that is, if only tangentially, from the family. That it comes with a good story is lagniappe. Don't you imagine that many old photographs come with their own good stories, if we only knew them?
Later Copy Of An Earlier Photograph: Harrison Tidd, William Tidd (In The Goat Cart), And Two Unidentified Family Members
William Tidd, whom I knew late in his life as "Poppy," was the father of my mother's second husband, Harold Tidd and the grandfather of my three step-brothers. I found a packet of Tidd family photos, which I've given to my stepbrother Jeff, but he let me keep this photo, and told me to send him a scan. When I saw the photograph, I knew pretty much instantly that the boy in the goat cart was a Tidd. He could be my stepfather as a young boy, he could be Jeff as a young boy, and he could even be Jeff's son David as a young boy. The other boy, wearing the tie, is Harrison, William's brother. I don't know what, or if, Harrison had a nickname, but Jeff tells me that everyone called Poppy "Red." Everyone, that is, except the Tidd boys. When I knew Poppy later in life (and I don't remember ever having a conversation with him, or doing anything other than nodding hello.) he was an unassuming gentleman, thin and not terribly outspoken, whose most distinctive characteristic was that his right (I think it was his right) arm was missing. He always wore a long-sleeve shirt that was pinned-up at the shoulder. He spent his life working for the Pennsylvania Railroad, and began working for them as a teenager, as a brakeman. Jeff says that he was between two cars (freight train, passenger train?) and that the conductor gave the engineer clearance to move the train but that Poppy was not clear. He got caught between the cars, and there went his arm. He was sixteen or seventeen years-old. (Lewis Hine has a famous photograph of a young millworker who lost an arm in a loom. If you can find that photo, you can imagine Poppy Tidd as a young man).
Poppy continued to work for the railroad for the rest of his working life. I guess that was better than not working at all---perhaps that allowed him to maintain his self-respect. I never heard about any particular bitterness that he held towards his employers----maybe he wasn't so happy with that conductor who made a bad decision.
What I also learned when Jeff saw this photograph is that, at a certain age, but still as teenagers, Poppy and Harrison stopped speaking to each other, and never spoke again throughout their lives. Their mother apparently had several husbands, and when she divorced their father, one of the boys stayed with the mother, and one of the boys went with the father. Apparently that decision left bad feelings on both sides. Jeff said that his father was told by Poppy that they had no relatives living in southeastern Ohio---that the Tidds living there were only distantly related. And then when Harrison grew up and married he divorced his first wife and remarried and established a second family, and THOSE half-brothers and sisters were told the same thing---that they had no close relative living in the vicinity. So in that little corner of the world, in a radius of thirty or forty miles. there were all sorts of Tidds living amongst each other, all being told that they weren't related. It's a story almost Biblical in its resonance.
And it's nice to have a Goat Cart Photograph that is, if only tangentially, from the family. That it comes with a good story is lagniappe. Don't you imagine that many old photographs come with their own good stories, if we only knew them?