The Annotator's Album

Family photographs, a blue-ink pen, and the women the labels name.

The Annotator

For years she had no name. Someone sat down with the family photographs, some dating to the 1840s, and wrote labels in blue ink on the mounts and backs. She was a child of Le Roy Warren Swift ("Papa") and of a daughter of the Winter family ("Mama"), and that was all the labels told. ^[3]

The labels speak in Rachel Winter Swift's voice. Rachel Winter Swift was born at New Bedford on 18 March 1896, the daughter of Leroy W. Swift and Fannie H. Winter. ^[2] Carol remembers a family member writing on the backs of the photos years ago, probably as Rachel told her. "Grandpa Wall ?" was written for a later generation. ^[12]

“Many many years ago when I was very little.”

“My father Le Roy W. Swift.”

“My Mother's mother. Elizabeth Arden.”

“Mama she was so pretty.”

Without her, the Winter-Swift photograph collection is a box of anonymous faces. With her ink, it is a family archive spanning five generations.

Reading the labels as Rachel's

Read in her voice, the labels are one woman's account of her own family. ^{[3] [1]}

• "Mama" and "Papa" are her parents, Fannie Harrison Winter and Le Roy Warren Swift, married at New Bedford on 13 June 1894. "Mama she was so pretty" is a daughter writing of her mother. ^[9]
• "My Mother's mother. Elizabeth Arden." is Rachel's grandmother, Elizabeth Arden Winter, named as Fannie's mother on Fannie's death record of 22 January 1914. ^{[4] [5]}
• "My great grandmother Winter" is Rachel's great-grandmother, Fanny P. Harrison Winter (1813–1892), the mother of Richmond C. Winter, photographed in the family's yard at Fall River. A second hand on the back of her cabinet card calls her "Mama's Grandmother Winter," the same woman seen one generation down. ^[6]
• "My Father's mother Rachel Warren" is Rachel's paternal grandmother, whose name she shared. ^[7]
• "My Father Le Roy W. Swift Sr. / His Father, a Navy Capt." reads as hers too: her father was "Sr." because her younger brother, Leroy W. Swift, born in 1899, carried his name. ^{[8] [10]}
• "I rode in this from the time I was 10-17 years old," on the photograph of the carriage from Woods Hole to Waquoit, would place those summers between about 1906 and 1913, if the words are Rachel's. ^{[3] [2]}
• "Granni Winter Papa Mama Grandpa Winter," on the front of the Dartmouth Street photograph, and "Grandma. Papa. Mama. Grandpa in Dartmouth St. living room." on the back. Grandpa is Richmond C. Winter. Granni Winter is not Elizabeth Arden, who had died in 1873; she is probably Susan D. (Pease) Eldredge Winter (m. Richmond C. Winter 1876, Fairhaven), his second wife, who shared the Swifts' household at 191 Washington St in 1900. ^{[3] [13] [14]}

Elizabeth Arden

An ambrotype case in the family archive carries a handwritten label: "My Mother's mother. Elizabeth Arden." ^[4] Elizabeth Arden was the wife of Richmond C. Winter (1839–1912). ^[5] The photograph shows a young woman in a snood with drop earrings, about the 1850s–1860s, in the Fall River and New Bedford area. ^[4] Research on her Arden family continues; see Warren & Arden.

Rachel Warren

Papa's mother. An oval portrait held in the family archive carries the label "My Father's mother Rachel Warren," identifying her as Leroy E. Swift's wife. ^[7] Her maiden name survived in her son's middle name: Le Roy Warren Swift, a second, independent witness, and her granddaughter carried her first name. ^{[9] [2]}

The Warren surname enters the line through Rachel T. Warren of Pennsylvania (b. 1843, M3PX-PV2), daughter of Isaac Warren (b. about 1812, Pennsylvania in the 1850 and 1860 censuses, New Jersey or New York in later records; died between 1870 and 1880, G9LH-3SV). These Warrens were a Philadelphia family; no Plymouth connection has been found. Whether the Isaac Warren line, which ends at Isaac in the current records, connects to the Edward Warren and Margaret Arden line of Maryland is open research. Pennsylvania Warren records before 1812 survive in the Pennsylvania State Archives and the Quaker monthly meeting books (notably Menallen Monthly Meeting, Adams County) but are not yet documented in the archive. ^[11] See Warren & Arden.