Isn’t she precious?

Like many of us this housebound spring, I’ve been finding it hard to concentrate well enough to blog or even read much. But rummaging through old pictures is a perfect distraction.

My pictures are horribly unorganized (I know! A perfect quarantine project…) but I thought I knew what I had. To my delight, yesterday’s finds included three envelopes of pictures (1915-1980s) given to me years ago by my Aunt Marjorie (Miller) Willbern, my grandmother’s sister and my godmother. And out popped this picture of their sister Nellie M. Miller, which I don’t remember having seen before.

I don’t know much about Aunt Nell. She was the third child of Frank and Stella (Owen) Miller, born in 1908 after her family moved from Marshfield, Missouri to Coffeyville, Kansas and she died in Shawnee, Oklahoma in 1916.

I’ve always loved this picture of Stella with her first three daughters, and the one below, taken when Nellie was two and looking very solemn. Nellie was six when my grandmother, Esther Jane Miller was born in 1914, and sadly, she died at age eight a week before Grandma turned two. Finding the sweet image of her in hat, coat, and boots pleases me so much–she is not forgotten.

According to Nellie’s obituary in The Marshfield (Missouri ) Mail, she died of diphtheria on January 2, 1916. The article is effusive about Nell’s talents as a violinist who was “much sought after,” her charm, and her beauty.

Postscript: My great grandmother Stella gave birth to five daughters between 1901 and 1923. Martha Lee Miller, her fifth daughter, was born on August 11, 1923, but sadly died two days later.