Molly Dill

This is a collage thingy I have been working on for awhile now. I want it to be just right so it's not progressing very fast. The photo is of my great grandmother Molly Dill who was born in 1859 in Hardin County, Tennessee. Supposedly the photo was made on the day of her wedding at the courthouse in Savannah, Tennessee in June 1876. The expression on her face makes me wonder if she was happy she was getting married. From everything I heard my mother say about my great grandfather he was a very kind man so I don't think she was worried about how he might treat her. I think maybe she wears the look of someone who never had any choices in her life up to that point. She didn't know who her father was, her mother was dirt poor and then when she was about 7 years old her mother married a widower with two small children. For reasons no one knows, Molly was farmed out to another family and her mother and new family lived in a house a short distance away. My mother quoted my grandmother as saying that Molly never once mentioned her mother. She moved to Texas from Tennessee in 1880and took one of her young half-sisters with her and from what I can tell, she never looked back. She and my great grandfather eventually had twelve children, the first one which died in infancy. It seems she had a lot of heartaches early in her life but she obviously forged a new life with her own large family and I like to think that she was happy.