Davis Sisters and Friends — Labeled Group Portrait, c. 1933–1936

The childhood Davis sisters with friends, c. 1933–1936, outdoors in spring. The original print carries a typed/printed caption identifying every figure by name, including three Davis sisters: Dorothy Marie Davis (Chuck’s grandmother), Betty Jean Davis (Aunt Betty Wolfe), and Mary Louise Davis — together as children, more than a decade before Dorothy married Robert Earl Wildermuth and Betty married Norm Wolfe.

The caption

Front Row — Margaret Dailey, Gale Howard & Dorothy Marie Davis

Middle Row — Earl Caldwell, Edna Close, Betty Jean Davis, ???? Holden & ????

Back Row — Carol Galloway, Pearl Holdren, Helen Dailey, Mary Louise Davis, Norma Howard, Dorothy Dailey & Dan Holdren

Three rows of children, posed informally on grass at what looks like a school or community gathering. Many of the girls wear light pastel dresses with sashes and bows — likely costumes for a school program, May Day, or community pageant of mid-1930s Morgan County, Ohio. Some children carry decorated fans. The boys wear light-colored shirts and dark trousers.

The three Davis sisters’ positions in the photograph:

• Dorothy Marie Davis (b. 24 February 1925) — front row, far right. She would be about 10 in 1935.
• Betty Jean Davis (b. 16 March 1926) — middle row, third from left. About 9 in 1935.
• Mary Louise Davis (b. 17 January 1924) — back row, near center. About 11 in 1935.

Why this matters

This photograph is the earliest known image of Dorothy Marie Davis Wildermuth — Chuck’s maternal grandmother — and the only image in this archive of her with both her sisters Betty and Mary Louise as children. Dorothy and Betty were less than 13 months apart in age; Mary Louise was a year older than Dorothy. The three sisters grew up together through the Morgan County / Marietta area of southeastern Ohio in the 1920s and 30s, all three of them within the small-town community where they would later marry their respective husbands.

The caption’s careful preservation of every child’s name (with two ”????” for figures whose names had been forgotten by the time the caption was typed) is itself a piece of the family’s documentary practice — the same impulse that gave the 1899 Eesley group portrait and the c. 1896 William Clifford Wildermuth family group portrait their typed caption cards.

The Dailey, Howard, Holden/Holdren, Galloway, Caldwell, and Close surnames are the broader Morgan-and-Washington-County, Ohio childhood community the Davis sisters grew up in. Several of these families intermarried with the broader Davis-Wildermuth network over the following decades.

Source: Davis-Wildermuth family archive, transmitted by Chuck Eesley 2026.