It just occurred to me that I never posted about the picture at the top of this blog. That is not a stock photo of random old-timey people; they are my actual ancestors, circa 1921-1922 or thereabouts.
The gentleman seated with the baby on his lap is my great, great grandfather, Pietro Pesaresi. The baby is my great uncle Karl Pesaresi (Alfonso’s younger brother); the adorable little tyke standing on the chair next to him is my grandfather, Alfonso. Standing behind them, from left to right, are: Giselda Pesaresi (one of Pietro’s daughters); Emma Grandi Pesaresi (my great grandmother), Palmira Pesaresi (another of Pietro’s daughters); Cesare Pesaresi (my great grandfather and Pietro’s only son; and Marianna Pierpaoli (Pietro’s wife and Cesare, Palmira, and Giselda’s mother).
While Pietro came to the US several times (to work; presumably he would send money home to his family in Italy), his wife and daughters never visited the United States. Apparently, even way back in the 1920s, photographers had some kind of crude “photoshop” methods, and Marianna, Giselda, and Palmira were added into the picture to make a family portrait.
Here is another family portrait. I believe it was taken in the late 1930s; in Cesare’s photo attached to his naturalization paperwork from 1939, he looks very much as he does in this picture:
