Hitch Family Portrait c1911

A short post today showing what I consider to be a priceless portrait of the Hitch side of my family from 1911, probably the summer of that year. It dates fairly easily given the size/age of the children in the picture plus a tragic fact that Goolie Hitch would be killed in NC in the Fall of 1911 having fallen off a lumber truck and crushed. This may be the only photo of this young man that exists. I have positively identified most all the players in the photo based upon other photos and the recollection of my grandmother Doris Hitch whose photo album from which this came.

The only two members in the photo that I had questioned were the two young men in the very back - sons of Thomas Henry Hitch (1869-1957) who was a brother to Clarence Hitch. My grandmother told me the one on the left is definitely Goolie Hitch (1894-1911) but the one on the right she was unsure but she thought is was Dorsey Hitch (1899-1979). Supposedly two of the boys (Clarence's nephews) had been visiting from NC that summer. My own thought here is that the young man on the right in the back is older than age 11 which Dorsey Hitch would have been at the time and, more likely, this is his brother Durand Hitch (1891-1940) who would have been age 20 at the time. So the reader is cautioned that the identity of that one particular young man is in question.

The photo was taken at the Hitch Farm on St. Lukes Road about 2 miles east of Fruitland, MD where I grew up and, where the house S. Clarence Hitch built for his wife in 1905. You can see the north chimney of the house in the upper background so the family had chosen to take the photo in the small orchard to the north of the house. I remember when I was a very young child in the 1960s, the remnants of some of the old apple and pear trees there. In this shot, you see my grandfather, G. Carroll Hitch as a 3 or 4 year old, his father S. Clarence Hitch and his grandfather Samuel Henry Hitch (1848-1924). Others are identified below - a precious and irreplacable photograph!

The adults in the back are:

Samuel Clarence Hitch, Aug 10 1880 - Sep 13 1956 (my great grandfather)

Anna Virginia (Vergie) (Jones) Hitch, Nov 13 1881 - Dec 7 1945 (my great grandmother)

Hester (Hettie) Ann (Driskell) Hitch, Jan 19 1845 - Nov 19 1915 (my great-great grandmother)

Goldsborough Thomas (Goolie) Hitch, Sep 5 1894 - Nov 10 1911

Bertha May Hitch (later married Walter White), Jun 20 1896 - 1979

Samuel Dorsey Hitch, Feb 19 1899 - Dec 29 1979 or, more probably; William Durand Hitch, Apr 2 1891 - Nov 19 1940

Samuel Henry Hitch, Dec 25 1848 - Aug 20 1924 (my great-great grandfather)

Susan A. (Susie) (Pusey) Hitch, Apr 1877 - Oct 16 1962

Raymond Asbury Hitch, Feb 2 1894 - Aug 2 1984

John William Hitch, Jul 24 1870 - May 29 1947

The three children up front are:

George Carroll Hitch, Aug 13 1908 - Apr 19 1990 (my grandfather)

Anna Jeanette Hitch, Jun 21 1905 - 1984

Minnie Estelle Hitch, Jun 21 1906 - Mar 10 1941