Miss Hulda Lorena Brown, or is it "Lorena Hulda Brown" circa 1908

Lorena Hulda Brown, circa early 1908

In this rather odd picture, probably taken the same day as the one from the last post, we again find Miss Hulda Lorena Brown.  Or is it Miss Lorena Hulda Brown that we see? Sometimes I feel the confusion of the occasional double exposure is a metaphor for the confusion of truth and fiction that I find as I search out the histories of “my people”. In the photo’s case – I can’t be sure if our photographer (likely Amy Paulson) was “experimenting” or if this double exposure was made by mistake.

In the case of “Miss Brown”, while her name is given as “Hulda Lorena” in the family trees on Ancestry.com (and family Should know the names of their people!), throughout all the official records – from the earliest record (the 1910 census) through the social security death index – her name is always listed as “Lorena” or sometimes “Lorena H.”  I’ll call her “Lorena” in deference to her own expressed choice  - as that is the name she gave to city directories and census takers throughout her life.

Our Lorena was born on June 26, 1907 in Olivia Texas.  Her father, Charley Brown and her mother Lora Cole Brown had been married just the year before. The 1910 census shows the Browns as the owners of a stock farm in the Olivia area. By 1920, Lorena and her parents, along with two younger brothers had moved up to Kerrville, Texas.  There Lorena, would finish high school and meet and marry Leonard Edward McDonald in 1925. In 1926, their daughter, Geraldine, would be born.

The family would continue to live in Kerrville up through 1935, where Leonard was employed (at least at the time of the 1930 census) as a mechanic at the hospital. By 1940, they had moved on to Corpus Christie where Leonard would become a postal worker (and not to long after their daughter, Geraldine, would marry one of his coworkers at the post office.) The family (as far as I can tell) remained in Corpus Christie until their deaths – Leonard’s in 1973 and Lorena’s in 1985. 

I wonder if they would return to visit Lorena’s uncles and aunts in Olivia from time to time?

Identifiers:

Negative #:  Paulson012 (1200 bpi tiff, downsized to 400 jpeg for this post)

Lorena Hulda Brown McDonald (b. Olivia, Texas: 26 Jun 1907; married Leonard Edwin McDonald 15 July 1925; d. Corpus Christie, Texas: 30 August 1985)

   (aka  Hulda Lorena Brown)

Place:  Olivia Texas

Date:  circa early 1908