Who Are These People?

Given the hundreds—make that thousands—of photos that I've inherited, a few are unidentified. This is one of my favorites. I'm pretty certain these people are relations, but I'm not even sure which family branch they belong to. One way or another, my brother Johnny wasn't the first cellist in the family.

Margaret Lucy Long Osborne (1856-1930)

Maggie, Newly Widowed, in 1885

My beautiful great-grandmother Margaret Lucy Long Osborne, AKA Maggie, was a mere 29 years old when she lost her husband, Abner McDowell Osborne; hence the widow's weeds in this picture of her. Abner, known as Mac, was a conductor for the Northern Pacific, and he died in 1885 in Missoula, Montana, trying to stop a runaway train. Maggie was left to raise four little girls on her own and did a bang-up job by all accounts.

Little Alma Osborne

Mac had been married before he met Maggie, but his first wife, Frances, died in Laramie, Wyoming, in 1876. She probably died from some illness, but the newspaper account doesn't give the cause of death. Frances left behind a thirteen-month-old daughter named Alma, above, shown wearing mourning clothes, poor little thing. Such tragedies were common in those days, but I can't imagine that the grief of losing a loved one was any easier.

Clockwise from left: Julia, Pearl, Alma,
Georgia Osborne, circa 1900

The Osborne women, mother and daughters, were very close. After Mac died, Maggie and the girls moved to Colorado to be near her sister, Julia Long Roberts. Eventually (mid 1890s?), Maggie and the girls moved to Los Angeles, along with Maggie's mother, Margaret Matilda Armstrong Long.
The girls, Julia (my maternal grandmother), Pearl, Alma, and Georgia, all lived very close to each other as adults and raised their families together. They had huge family gatherings, and Grandma Maggie was the beloved center of it all.

1919 Osborne Family Gathering

Maggie Behind My Mother's Gigantic Bow

Maggie circa 1920s

Although Maggie's life could be painted as tragic—she lost her father when she was six, her husband when she was twenty-nine, and one of her brothers ten years after that—she found the strength to carry on, on her own, raising her daughters to be strong, loving women who saw the joy in life. I know that she was a woman of deep faith, and that must have sustained her through the tragedies, but there was something special in her spirit that made her look at the blessings in her life rather than dwell on the losses. I suspect that Maggie's influence was part of the reason my mother was so unflaggingly upbeat in her own life. Maggie died at 74 in 1930, having left behind a legacy of love and faith. How I wish I had known her!

John Arthur McClellan

My paternal great-grandfather, John Arthur McClellan, was born in La Grange, Texas, in 1852. The son of a newspaper man, John Arthur wasn't exactly career driven. He was a farm hand, had his own farm for a while, and then picked up the tinner's trade. After his wife, Margaret Young McClellan, died in 1908, he spent the rest of his years living with his children in Atlanta, GA; then Waco, TX; and finally La Verne, CA, where he died in 1935. He drove his daughter-in-law, my Grandma Mac, crazy when he lived with them; she came from hardworking German stock, and I think she just didn't get him. His daughter-in-law, my Grandma Pearl, adored him though, judging from the tone of her letters to him. He looks pretty affable in the pictures I have of him. So he didn't set the world on fire. I'll bet he could tell a good story.

Joseph Polk Crozier

From early 1900s, most likely: My maternal grandfather, Joseph Polk Crozier. Joe grew up on a small farm in Arkansas. He moved to Los Angeles to seek his fortune around the time this picture was taken. He landed a good job with Railway Express, sort of an early version of Fed Ex, married Julia Osborne, and was a wonderful, loving father to my mother, Margaret, and her little brother, Joe (aka Uncle Bud). Grandpa Crozier died when I was three, but I do have a few memories of him, especially his delightful sense of humor.