Happy Valentine’s Day: A tribute to old sweethearts with a focus on forebears

by Alden Cole on February 14, 2015 · 0 comments

“Dawn love is silver, wait for the west: old love is gold love, old love is best.” – Katherine Lee Bates (1859-1929)

1897Harris&Edeth650Paternal grandparents: Weymouth Harris Cole (Jan 14, 1879 – Nov 19, 1973) & Edeth Belle Waterhouse Cole (Sep 1, 1880 – Jan 15, 1979). Married Dec 25, 1902, they lived to experience their Platinum Anniversary – 70 years together.
1910sHarris&EdethWP
“O bid me love and i will give / A loving heart to thee; / A heart as soft, a heart as kind / A heart as sound and free / As in the whole world thou canst find / That heart I’ll give to thee.” – Robert Herrick (1591-1674)
1930sHarris&Edeth2WP
“O were I in the wildest waste / Sae black and bare, sae black and bare, / The desert were a Paradise / If thou wert there, if thou wert there.” – Robert Burns (1759-1796)
1952.50thAnniversary650
“My beloved spake, and said unto me, Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away. For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; the flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land. The fig tree putteth forth her green figs, and the vines with the tender grape give a good smell. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.” – Song of Solomon 2: 10-13

With the exception of the last double portrait of Harris and Edeth, the timing of their photographs above is approximate: 1. Late 1890s, high school graduation portraits when both were in their late teens. 2. Married in their early 20s in 1902, this snapshot is probably from the late 1910s when they were in their mid-to late-thirties. 3. Snapshot from the 1930s when they were in their 50s. 4. These datable portraits were taken on the occasion of their 50th wedding anniversary – the Golden – Christmas Day 1952; Harris was about to turn 74 twenty days later in the new year, and Edeth had turned 72 the prior September. He would live another two decades, whereas she would live almost twenty-seven more years.

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