Well, Guten Tag to great-great-grandpa August. Make sure you pronounce his name properly… Saying Ow-Goost should do nicely.

In case you missed it, do go and take a look at yesterdays post of Ow-goosts wife Vil-hell-meena and the restoration that I did on her half of the photograph.

Here’s the original scan of Great-great-grandpops. He has fared slightly better than gg-grandma in terms of the aging of the photograph. So not too much work to do on him other than remove a scratch that is running downwards through his left eye (HIS left) and down on to his cheek.

Of course the whole photograph has discoloured over the years – well I suppose that’s not really a term one uses for something that was monochromatic in the first place. Let’s just say that it has aged and dramatically yellowed with time.

Isn’t it amazing that it’s lasted so long? At least 150 years. Amazing.

So um about that beard gg-pops? Was that fashionable at the time?

To have even been photographed all those years ago, he must have been a man of some standing, and judging by the fine detailing on the tie, it appears to be made of silk.

Vil-hell-meena’s frock is certainly nothing to sniff at either, because again, one can see that this is a fairly swish looking fabric with intricate detailing.

Again, I can’t imagine what it must have been like all those years go, battling the elements in a harsh environment, in a colony so, so far from home.

Anyhoo. Here’s a closer look at great-great-grandpops.

I find myself staring at this photograph and wondering what was he like?

Did he smoke a funny shaped pipe?

Was he a kind man?

I know that they had a fair amount of land and kept horses (there’s a piece of my own personal puzzle solved) but I suppose in those days it was a case of HORSE or WALK.

Amazing to think that he would never have laid eyes on a car in his lifetime.

What would he think of aeroplanes these days?

Of Cell Phones and the Space Shuttle?

Of walking on the moon, and a possible mission to mars!?

When you think about it, we really are only just a few spandex suits away from the future as envisioned by Buck Rogers, Star Ranger of the year 2025.

Did he know his waistcoat buttons were undone? Did he care? Did he look at the photograph later when he would have received it, and smack his forehead and give the German Namibian colonial equivalent of ‘Doh!’

Did things like life insurance leads exist back then?

Anyway, here’s the final piece after having restored, reshaped, flipped and recolorizing the newly restored photograph.

I had it printed out to A4 for my mom, and well without tooting my own trumpet, it looks really great.

At first I restored it to pure black and white. But there really is something romantic, about a subtle sepia hint, just a little something to show that it’s not merely a constructional piece, but that it represents something which has really witnessed the passage of time.

I’m glad that I’m going to have a piece of family history to show my boys one day.

Where ever in the world we end up living, I’ll be able to show them a piece of their family history, and I will be able to tell them about August and Wilhelmina Schroder the German husband and wife who left their native land of Germany and boarded a ship, to go and live in a colony at South West Africa (Namibia).

I suppose in a way, history is sort of repeating itself.

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I wonder what my butt will look like in a spandex suit in 2025?

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