It’s John Wesley Pinckney (1861–1919), a great-grandfather of Jackie’s, in, we think, Nebraska or Iowa. The “Grandpa Pinckney” written along the bottom looks to be the handwriting of Jackie’s maternal grandmother, Lillian Fay Buckley Pinckney, perhaps as a keepsake for her daughter Violet. Lillian married John Joseph Pinckney, John Wesley’s son.
I was fortunate to meet John Joseph Pinckney and Lillian in 1977 at their farm in Smyrna, N.Y., where he had raised Red Polls. This was two years before Jackie and I were married. This was also the same day I first met Aunt Violet, Uncle LeRoy (“That what they teach you in college, to put your coat on to walk from the car to the house?”: his very first words to me), and cousin Dale, over at their Goodrich dairy farm not too far away in Sherburne. Aunt Violet gave a copy of this photo to Jackie.
It is simply my favorite picture. In it lives the ancient virtue of perseverance. Staying with it is seen here, as is getting rid of dead wood. It looks like composing to me. In this wash of a snapshot, his left foot is just about to alight and his right arm is slightly akimbo, just enough to balance the load on that broad Scottish shoulder. He is upright and straight. To the left, a hint of a simple clapboard house. He has just this half-second cleared the out-buildings. From above, the log frames them. In another step or two the front of the log would be hidden, but we see all of it, bluntly cut in front, trailing a dramatically decaying comet’s wake behind. It is stunningly parallel with what looks to be a garden-border on the ground. He is just left of center, driving the motion out of the frame, but amazingly, the log is perfectly centered between the right and left borders of the picture. He both bears his burden and is obscured by it. They make the sign of the cross.
This photo is a one in a billion, and transfixes me.
Kile, I am fairly certain this was taken in Nebraska. There are several pictures taken with the same surroundings of my mother as not much more than a toddler. One of my favorites is of her and a pig. She remembered going on a train , with her mother and Joe when her grandpa was very ill, to help her grandma take care of him. I believe it was not too long before he died. I will check the Pinckney family history book and see. Can check with it’s author too. There is a Pinckney family member still living in the house Grandpa Pinckney was born in in Iowa. From what I understand it has been in the family forever since. Don’t know what you know of this.
Thanks so much for this information, and we’d love to find out whatever there is to know. To think someone from the family still lives in the Iowa house! If you know town names or anything, that’d be great, but I’m so glad, in any case, that you told me this!
Kile
This was my great great grandpa pinckney, i had the pleasure of meeting my great grandmother Violet Goodrich in 1999 when i was 15. She gave me the amazeing memories i have of my sisters and i spending time on their dairy farm for the summer. She was very dear to us all. Thank you for posting this photo. It is beautiful. –Chrystal Fiehl
Dear Chrystal,
You are so kind to write and to tell me about all this. I love that farm and the family history. Violet was as sweet a person as they come. All the best to you,
Kile