Here in West Michigan, my student, Evan, brought me a box of wonderful footage of his family’s home movies, a number of which we’ll be featuring here. The first is the wedding of grandparents in the late 1940s, and includes images of Evan’s great-grandparents – one of those amazing events to have preserved on film.

Evan explains:

It’s the wedding of Ken and Jan Rattenbury (maiden name – Baxter)
The date is actually Sept. 18th, 1948 at St. Benedict’s in Chicago.
Behind the camera is Gardner Kreiser, the bride’s 2nd cousin.

Evan also shared the emails his grandparents sent with more details about the wedding (I love emails from grandparents):

Dear Evan, The pictures are Mine and your Grandmother’s Wedding on Sept 18, 1948. The pictures were made by Jan’s Uncle Gardner. The pictures are mostly the family. The two old ladies are your great-grandmothers. The lady with the pink flowered hat is my mother (Alice Rattenbury), and the car was our good friend Eddie Roger’s who took us away. Hope that is enough. Love grampa

Hi Evan: It’s your gramma. I just saw the movies and they are super. Haven’t watched any of them since your folks first sent the VCR’s. Terri Spies was my maid of honor, Uncle Bruce (Rattenbury) was Best Man (lady in red and the guy next to her in the second shot of her), my grandmother and Grampa’s grandmother were the oldest people in the movie. So many of our friends and relatives are gone!!! My dad (John Baxter) was the one with the sexy mustache, The church was St. Benedict’s down on the corner where we lived in Chicago.

Click the “MPEG-2″ link above for a high-resolution version of this film, provided by the Internet Archive.

This week’s post is a beautiful, relaxing family get together from 1948, sent to us by Diane Dobronte in California. She offers some background:

This film is a real treasure for my family as it is the only record I’ve found of my Grandparents. It was shot in 1948 by my Dad, Frank Dobronte, on a visit to see his family in Trenton, NJ. My Grandparents: John and Rose Dobronte migrated to the United States from Hungary in 1906. They married in 1911 and went on to have 10 children, five sons and five daughters. They were all hardworking, tireless and had a lot of fun together.

This looks like a Saturday or Sunday at 940 Franklin St, Trenton – my grandparents house. Four of the five handsome sons are there: as they come out the door, Ernie, Bill, Zoil, Frank (my dad) and Grandpop (son John is missing). Three of the daughters, Maggie, Ethel and Bette are there as well as three of the wives: Zoil’s wife, Lorraine, and Ernie’s wife, Audrey with their baby son, Erniejr… always known to me as “little Ernie”; and Sylvia my Uncle Bill’s wife (daughters Helen and Rose are not in the film).

My Grandpop was known as a wonderful gardener and he shows some of his garden off in part of this clip. The little boy with the fireman’s hat on is James Schultz, son of Maggie… (we always called him Sarge-I’m not sure why)… he didn’t become a fireman. My Grandpop was a poet and wrote poems to the love of his life, Grandmom. Unfortunately I did not learn to speak Hungarian and missed a lot of what they said to me… but there were always smiles, laughter and lots of delicious Hungarian dishes whenever we visited – I remember a feeling of deep love.

In the clip they are all coming out of the side door that went into the kitchen… lots of good things were made in there!

Be sure to visit the Internet Archive for a full-resolution version of this excerpt and additional footage.

Sound is “CountrysideSummerEvening,” posted by pcaeldries at my favorite Creative Commons-based sound repository, the Freesound Project.

One of the things I love about transferring old films is the artifacts that often come with them. This film is in its original box, with its original stamp. I also found crumpled down at the bottom a booklet from Kodak for improving your home movies. It even mentions that you could get detailed comments on the quality of your films by sending them to Kodak for review–and don’t forget to include a three-cent stamp on your letter.

–Jen