It was Red
Woman in the Middle | February 9, 2017As I was preparing to go to Tennessee to visit family, I scanned some old family photos on the computer to take to my cousin and my mother’s cousin. I looked at the old black and white and sepia toned photos of my mother’s parents more than I had in a very long time. It suddenly dawned on me that I didn’t know what color hair my mother’s parents had. They died long before I was born and it just never came up in conversation with my mother. My mother’s generation didn’t talk about those kinds of things very much, family things. So, for all these years, as I looked at old black and white and sepia toned photos, I just assumed their hair was brown.
Maybe in another family that assumption would make sense. But then the light bulb went off over my head. For my family, shades of brown hair could not be assumed. Not when my mother looked like this with her gorgeous dark red hair:
This is a black and white photo that was hand tinted, like they did back in the day, but I think it gives a fairly good representation of my mother’s hair color.
Mom had to get that red hair from somewhere. Could it have come from one of her parents? How would I know? But on my trip my cousin and I had a lovely visit with our moms’ cousin. She knew my grandparents personally. They were her Aunt Mary and Uncle Dan. So I asked. She told me her Uncle Dan always had salt and pepper hair for as long as she could remember. But Aunt Mary had red hair, Dark red hair. Oh my! I could have cried! My grandmother had red hair, just like my Mom!
I have no idea why that never came up, when Mom and I discussed her parents. You would think it would have. Maybe it did and I just don’t remember. Whatever the case, I now know. My grandmother had red hair.
My red headed Arkansas grandmother.
Beautiful picture of your mom. I’ve never seen that one.
I am guessing it was taken when she went to college for that year, but I don’t know for sure.
That’s funny, because I have always wondered what color my mom’s hair really was. She had been dying it since she was 19 because i itt had started to turn gray. I had always assumed that it was dark brown, but actually, I think it was a light brown with red highlights after asking my aunt and dad.
We have red hair in our family too (no, not me) and I don’t know where it came from. Two grandparents died before I was born and the other two were gray as I remember them. I don’t have many pictures and I can’t tell from them. We also had a blonde streak too. That one I got but not the beautiful natural platinum blonde my cousin had.
With nine kids, my mother’s family had every color you could get.