Family group at the Black Lake cottage with Leonard, c. 1928

A group of eight people in front of the Black Lake cottage, c. 1928 — the year of the companion “Leonard bringing in the dock” photograph on the same beach. The cottage’s pale-painted wood-clapboard wall is the backdrop, with two glass-paned windows and a screened doorway visible behind the cluster of figures.

What the photograph shows

Eight members of the family, identified in 2026 by Roberta Burnes (Helen’s daughter), in two rows. Roberta noted the photograph was taken “when mom was only four” — fixing it to 1928.

Front row, left to right:

• Dale Eesley — in a tan straw boater and dark leather jacket, smiling; eleven years before his drowning on this same lake.
• Thelma — Dale’s wife, in a soft cloche hat and dark coat with a small dark book or wallet in her lap, seated between Dale and Lyle.
• Lyle Eesley — about twelve here, in a plaid sweater and dark tie, hands clasped; he would die a Japanese POW at Cabanatuan in 1942.
• Helen Eesley — the small child of about four in a white pinafore-style smock, looking slightly off-camera; Roberta’s mother, seated between Lyle and Len.
• Leonard “Len” David Eesley — at right, thick dark hair and a wide grin, sleeves rolled; the “Leonard” of the file label.

Back row:

• Will and Don Eesley — two of the older brothers, in white shirts.
• Lillie Dale Chenoweth Eesley — “Grandma,” in a dark cloche hat with a pale band, round wire-rim spectacles, and a draped cape collar; the cottage’s matriarch.

The cast, confirmed

For years this was one of the archive’s open-identification photographs — only the file label “with Leonard” and the likely figure of Lillie Dale were certain. In 2026 Roberta Burnes named the whole group from memory: front row, Dale, Thelma, Lyle, Helen, and Len; back row, Will, Don, and their mother Lillie Dale. The photograph sits with the Leonard-at-the-dock 1928 frame as the two earliest dated Black Lake images in the archive — the same summer, in the cottage Charles Leonard had built with his older sons, three years before Dale and Helen would pull the abandoned-boat false-teeth prank on Grandpa, eleven years before Dale’s drowning on the lake, and roughly two decades before the cottage burned in the 1950s.

Source: Eesley family archive; transmitted by Chuck Eesley June 2026.