The Three Davis Sisters — Mary (5), Dorothy (4), Betty (3), c. 1929

The earliest known image of Dorothy Marie Davis — Chuck’s maternal grandmother — and the earliest image of the three Davis sisters together. Three small girls in light dresses standing in front of a porch railing or fence, with a faint exterior wall behind. The typed caption beneath gives the line-up left-to-right: Mary Davis age 5, Dorothy Davis age 4, Betty Davis age 3. The ages place the frame at c. 1929 — Mary born January 1924, Dorothy February 1925, Betty March 1926.

What it documents

It is the document of the complete childhood Davis-sister set, one year and ten months apart at the extremes. Three girls under five, in the years just before the Unionville house fire and the family’s recovery in a one-room garage through the cold winter that followed (also described in the same 1990 Heritage). None of the three knew yet that Dorothy would later be the one who left Ohio for the West Coast with Robert Earl, Mary would stay in southeastern Ohio, and Betty would marry Norm Wolfe — the “Uncle Norm” of Chuck’s childhood and one of the “Betty and Norm Wolfe” named in Terrie’s 2017 obituary as “close relatives by way of long entertainment of visiting family.” The kinship the obituary preserves was a literal sister-bond at its origin.

The photograph is the first of three frames of the sisters that survive in the Heritage; the next two are the c. 1930 “why so glum?” frame and the c. 1931 puppies-and-bare-feet frame.

Source: The Wildermuth/Fleming Heritage by Robert Earl Wildermuth, 1990 — Davis section.