Charlotte Matilda Delp Nichols

I didn't even know this image existed until last week, when my cousin Mary Francis sent it to me. It's our great-grandmother Charlotte Matilda Delp Nichols. Dating the photograph is hard because there are only a couple of known dates that let us assume a window of opportunity for the image.

It has to have been taken not long before 1892, because that's when Great-grandmother Nichols is believed to have died. The only other date that provides any help is her husband's birth date. He was Ace McClellan Nichols, born in 1865 - the year the Civil War ended - in Yadkin County, N.C. (Ace was the last in the family to be born in North Carolina, before the move to Grayson County, Va.) I don't know when Ace and Charlotte married, but I do know their first son, Horace, my grandfather, was born in 1886. Given all of that, my guess is that the picture was taken circa 1888-1890. But, as I said, that's a guess. We can safely assume she was about her husband's age or younger, so she might have been about 27 when she died and somewhere around 25 when this picture was taken. But rural life was hard in 19th-century Southwest Virginia, so she might be younger than she looks.

The first thing that struck me about the picture is Great-grandmother Nichols' long hair, arranged down the back of her neck and draped across her chest in a cascade well below her shoulders. It must have been a source of great pride for her. She no doubt dressed to have her picture taken, which could not have been an everyday occasion. Her dark dress covers her from high on her neck to the ground. Not even her feet are visible. On her bare right hand is a ring. A wedding ring? If so, it's not on the hand we'd expect it to be on today. Maybe the wedding ring -- if that's what it is -- was not made for her, and maybe she wore it on the finger on which it fit. There are so many possibilities. And on her left hand, she wears a glove. Where is the other glove? We might expect it to be held in her gloved hand, but it's not there. Did she routinely wear her wedding ring on the right hand and a glove on her left? If so, why? Was her left hand misshapened in some way? I'm also assuming that she was gloveless on her right hand because she wanted her ring to be seen.

Given that she dressed up for the picture, we can assume she is standing in front of her own house - although that's pure assumption. If so, it gives us a clue that Ace Nichols and his family had little money. The house speaks of poverty. The porch is held up by stones at the corners, and the house appears to be unpainted. A volunteer seedling tree is sprouting from the ground just in front of her. The fallen leaves where she is standing hint of autumn and the coming to the mountains of hard winter times. Their labors did not go towards landscaping. The house was merely shelter, and all their efforts would have gone into farming and surviving.

I am puzzled about that decorative object she's wearing on her left. I just can't figure out what it is.

After Great-grandmother Nichols died, Great-grandfather Nichols was briefly wedded to Della Ward of Grayson County, but the marriage quickly ended in divorce. In 1898, he married Della's younger sister, Laura Novella Ward.

Without our great-grandmother, none of us in this particular Nichols line would be who we are. I see gentleness in her face, and a life of hard times, a life almost unimaginable today, a life filled with endless work from sun-up to dusk. And yet she moved her generation forward, doing her part to shape what we would be and the opportunities we would have that could only be dreamt of a century ago. I would love to have known her. She would have so many answers that are now lost to time about the struggles of the Nichols family.