My Home In Sellwood

I found it in an antique store, an old, faded photograph. A vine covered porch, a family in what looks like Sunday best, posed.   Dark suited father, mother in a dark skirt and white blouse, and four daughters in white dresses. One girl with a sailor tie and collar. Between two of the girls sits a family pet, plants hang from the porch beams and rest on the rail. All are smiling.  At least this is how I am seeing the photo and the people depicted.   The house number looks like it might have been 103, perhaps 703.  It is so faint it is hard to know. The photo looks as if it was taken in 1910 or so.

My father lived in Sellwood that year – at 724 Lexington, the number was changed when the Portland streets were renumbered. He was less than one year old. The family moved to northeast soon after, but Sellwood was always a name that figured prominently in the few family stories that were passed on. Ironically enough –we have sort of figured that under the current numbering system the house would have been west of 13th and east of 11th on Lexington.  My RE/MAX equity group office is on 13th and Lexington.

I wonder who the people were, where the house was located.  Someone has written in that beautiful old script, I think was called copperplate, “My Home In Sellwood”.  Seems as if someone, perhaps she, was proud of her home, her family.  Was the photo kept in a shelf in that house? It’s in the kind of cardboard frame that could be folded to stand.  Or was it sent to another family member?  Was it by chance on or near Lexington? Could they have possibly known my grandparents? Then as now, Sellwood was a small community. Well, probably not!  That would be an incredible stretch.

I paid $5.00 for that small piece of a family’s history. I was browsing in Stars, one of the antique malls in what is known as Antique Row on Milwaukie Avenue in Westmoreland.  There is another row of stores along 13th ave on both sides of Tacoma in Sellwood. The Sellwood Moreland area of Portland is a one of the destination and popular eastside Portland, OR neighborhoods. It’s not unusual to be in an antique store anywhere in the US and see stacks of unclaimed and unrecognized old photos.  Each one has a story — even a made up one. 

If someone is reading this and recognizes that Sellwood home, I would love to hear from you. I’ll figure out a reward of some kind for the story of My Home in Sellwood.  Perhaps a bottle of wine from Burdigala, a local wine shop? I’ve given the original photo to the Sellwood Historical Society to add to their collection.