1937 Photo

Today this image came up on my computer screen. Wow! That's my grandparents' house in Danvers! I recognized it instantly, though I had never seen this photograph before.

For fourteen years (1943-1957) I lived right next door. The photographer in 1937 must have been standing about where our house (built in 1940) would later be constructed.

"Uncle Will" refers to the Rev. William S. Nichols, my father's father – "Grandaddy" to me. I wonder why there were so many cars in that yard that day. The location was 123 Preston Street (later called Nichols Street), in the Hathorne section of Danvers. Today the street is called Conifer Hill Drive, with an office park occupying the area where our houses had been.

This photo was in a photograph album that belonged to one of my cousins, Dudley Brewster. His nephew Dave Brewster (son of Dudley's older brother David) has been digitizing old photos from family albums and occasionally posting batches of scanned images for family members to review. Each batch is a surprise; we never know what might be included. Some photos are puzzles: images of people or places not now identifiable. But this photo stood out as VERY familiar.

By the time of my childhood a big dense hedge blocked some of this view, and shrubbery had grown to cover the foundation of that sunporch (providing great hiding places during games of Kick-the-Can or Hide-and-Seek). I'm surprised to learn that the two-car garage by the house was already there in 1937. I thought of it as the "new"garage; the old one (out-of-sight to the right) became the first location of my father's hearing-aid manufacturing business, Nichols & Clark, Inc.

We assume Dudley took this photograph. I remember Dudley well, and he frequently had a camera in his hand. His label reflects what the older generation (his mother Annie Nichols Brewster and others) would have said, because Will was their uncle. "Great Uncle Will" would have been more accurate from Dudley's perspective, but we all tended to use the language of our elders as we identified relatives.