Second frame at the Black Lake cottage — with Will, Don, and Dale, c. 1928

A second frame from the family’s Black Lake, Michigan summers of the late 1920s — a group of about nine posed against the cottage wall — distinct from the 1928 group with Leonard already in the archive.

Confirmed (from the labeled scan)

• Back row: Will Eesley (left) and Donald “Don” Eesley (center).
• Front row, left: Dale Dudley Eesley (1906–1939) — another frame of the brother who would drown at Black Lake in July 1939; one of the few photographs of him alive.
• Front center, in the cloche hat: Thelma (Haughn) Eesley, Dale’s wife (married November 1927), seated beside her husband — as in the companion frame, which places her between Dale and Lyle.

Proposed identifications for the rest

These are educated guesses, grounded in the documented cast of the companion 1928 Black Lake frame — which independently records Lillie Dale and little Helen Burnes at the same gathering — not yet confirmed by a label:

• Older woman, back right (glasses, cloche hat): most likely Lillie Dale Chenoweth Eesley (b. 1877), the matriarch and mother of the brothers — present in the companion frame. Her strong resemblance to Aunt Ota in the 1929 Sault Ste. Marie photo is exactly what one expects: the two were sisters.
• Little girl, front: most likely Helen “Little Helen” (Eesley) Burnes (b. January 1924), about four years old — also in the companion frame.

Still genuinely open: the boy of about seven or eight (no Eesley grandchild was that age in 1928 — likely a Chenoweth- or Smith-side cousin, or a family friend); the young woman at front right (possibly Big Helen, Leonard’s wife, if she attended); and a partly-hidden figure who could be Lyle or Leonard, both recorded at the companion frame but not visible enough to tag here.

Source: Eesley family archive, from Roberta Burnes Walker’s keeping; Will, Don, and Dale confirmed from the labeled scan (Chuck Eesley, 2026); the remaining identifications proposed here by inference from the companion 1928 frame’s cast, pending confirmation.