The GIrls on the Porch

There, across from the Methodist Church and across from the proposed site for the new County Court House, the Gordons lived and prospered. And posed for a photograph with cows. They were city-folk now. Papa still taught school and helped his sister Mary Sue on the Gordon Plantation but they had mooooved into town in 1890.

Families in town sometimes kept chickens and raised hunting dogs. The Gordons did. They grew a little garden, also. They may have actually kept cows on the back acreage and perhaps some oinky pigs, also, but it would have been a noisy place if they did.

            Sometime about 1894-5, Papa had some cows he needed to sell. He determined to photograph the cows in the front yard of his home. This must have been a big event because he and his son George R Gordon donned suits with a hat to match. Four of the five daughters were helped into their coats and hats and hurried out onto the front porch by “Aunt Bessie,” the cook. The two older girls wore matching dark, double-breasted buttoned outerwear that made them appear much larger across the shoulders than they were. The two younger daughters did the same; theirs were light colored coats with mutton sleeves and festive, multi-pointed collars.

            This photo is affectionately known in the family as “the cow picture,” for if the cows were not about to be photographed for their sale, this charming picture of the sisters and their brother along with Papa and “Aunt Bessie” in the doorway would not exist.

            Frances, Susie, Mib, and Janie are posed beside one of the Corinthian columns, providing a backdrop for the photographs of the cows. Who took this picture? And where was Alice?

            In front with Cow 1 is an unidentified man with a huge, gray beard and George R Gordon, standing straight and tall, glad to be in the manly position of holding on to a cow. To the far right with Cows 2 and 3 stands Papa, Charles Thomas Gordon, and another unidentified man. Papa wears a white bow-tie and sports a pocket watch along with his fedora. He is dressed up to pose with the cows.

The rose trellis needs trimming as the weather must be quite chilly. The leaves on the roses appear dead and ready to crumble. The yard is dirt with some sprigs of whatever grasses grow without care. A brick walkway fashioned in a pattern leads up to the five steps at the approach to the front porch and open doorway flanked by two etched glass panes. Floor to roof shutters cover windows on the right side of the house, but are opened to the left, showing curtains in the window, suggesting the living area to the left of the center hall. The multiple Corinthian columns appear on two sides of the house in this photo.

            Missing from the photograph is first daughter: Alice V. Gordon.  She would have been sixteen or so and in typical Alice fashion would have raised herself up to full height, pitched her chin forward and said, “If you think I’m getting dressed up in a coat, standing out in the cold on the porch to have my photograph taken with a bunch of cows, you are out of your mind. You go right ahead. You’ll not find me there.”