Tag Archives: Eveline Coates

Short Stack

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Eveline Coates, Alice Tingle and Friends

I’ve been following Retronaut recently. You could describe it as an online gallery of old photographs, usually with some cultural or pop culture significance. Yesterday’s pictures reminded me of a photograph of my Grandma Eveline Coates Hoskins. The particular photos shared on Retronaut are taken from The Burns Archive, so you can view them there if you like. The Burns Archive calls stacking a “forgotten sport”.

The photo of Grandma and her friends is a “short stack” in comparison to the towering stack of people posing in the linked photographs. I can’t quite figure out how they did this. They appear to be over water. Is it a stack? Or is it just the point of view of the camera that makes it appear so? Was stacking for photos really a fad in the early 1900s?

I can’t identify everyone in this picture, but I know who the two leaning to the left are. Alice Tingle, Eveline’s friend and future sister-in-law, has dark hair and is 2nd from the bottom. Eveline is above her, leaning in the same direction.

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Can you identify the other girls in this picture?

Abbie and Eveline

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Abbie Webber Smith Brender

When I was a little girl, I wanted to grow up to be a Grandmother. Not a mother. Not a veterinarian, or a teacher, or president. A Grandmother.

My grandmothers, Abbie Webber Smith Brender and Eveline Coates Hoskins, were the inspiration for that childhood ambition. I was blessed to spend most of my early years in daily contact with one or the other of them.

I followed my grandmothers around as they went about their daily tasks and they included me. I wasn’t too little. I wasn’t in the way. (Well, I might have been too little and in the way, but they never said so and never made me feel as though I was.) Eveline called me her “little buddy.” They shared their work with me. They shared their hobbies and interests with me. They played with me – each in her own way. They had soft arms to just sit and cuddle with me.

Eveline Coates Hoskins

I moved away from my grandmothers before my 8th birthday. I missed them terribly. What had been daily or weekly time with them turned into yearly visits. Not only did I miss the personal time with my grandmothers (and grandfathers and a lot of other family!), I also missed those Sunday dinners around Grandma’s table – the place where family stories are told and retold.

Alas, I am not (yet?) a Grandmother. In the meantime, I’ll be working on our family history and collecting as many stories as I can.