My Favorite?

This is my first time participating in the Smile for the Camera carnival. The theme this edition is Your Favorite Photo. As I've read other participants comment, I agree, this is a very unfair challenge. I have favorite photographs of particular ancestors, but choosing among them puts me in an uncomfortable position.

My favorite photos are probably of those for whom I have the fewest photographs. The less photographs I have, the more I treasure those that I do. This narrows down the options, but certainly not far enough.

I have a large number of photographs of my four grandparents, and while rarer on my mother's side, I have a good selection of photographs of my eight great grandparents. It wasn't too difficult to create this tree:


My grandparents are on their respective honeymoons - both in 1937. As children, they were each in the photographs from which I took the faces of their parents, so the eight great-grandparents are roughly similar ages. (Except Samuel Deutsch on the far right, who was twenty years older than his wife, Helen.)

For truly rare photographs I have to go back one more generation, and I can only do this on one branch. I have photographs of all four of Melvin Newmark's grandparents: Moshe Leyb and Minnie Cruvant, and Samuel and Rose Newmark.

Narrowing my selection down to these photographs, the choice isn't difficult. My favorite was taken shortly after my father was born. (And I believe this is the first time I am violating an earlier decision not to post photographs of living relatives, but I don't think he'll mind.)

This photograph is special for several reasons. It is one of about 5 photos that were taken at about the same time - probably the same day or weekend - clearly for the same purpose – to celebrate four generations of Newmarks. Samuel died 3 years later.

On the far left is My father's grandfather, Barney Newmark, and grandmother Bertha (nee Cruvant). My middle name was in her honor, and my Hebrew name, Baruch, was in honor of Barney. In the middle is Samuel Newmark and Rose (nee Sandgart). Samuel appears in the other photographs that were taken on the same day or days as this one, Rose doesn't. This is the only photograph I currently know of that contains Rose. I assume it is her from her position – who else would it be? – but there are no other photographs to compare it to. The two people on the right aren't Newmarks. They're my father's other two grandparents, Herman and Annie Feinstein. The two couples knew each other as friends before their children married, and I have some wonderful pictures of the four of them vacationing together I will likely share at some time. So this photograph contains all four of my father's grandparents, and two of his great grandparents. It's hard to beat that combination.

But is this my favorite photograph of all of my family photographs? Of course not. No such photograph exists. But it's certainly 'one of my favorites'. And if I am asked this question again, I will choose another one of them.