This is a really neat picture sent in from Lora Herrera. Click on the image to enlarge it. Thanks for sharing it with us Lora!
This photo was taken in Franklin County, Pennsylvania sometime in the late 1800s. Among the women in the photo is my great great grandmother, Charlotte Cozar Calimer (1856-1935), sitting to the left in the background, her face partially visible. Plucking the feathers from the birds was one of the jobs Charlotte did from time to time to help support her family.Â
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Lora Herrera
What an interesting photo–real depiction of life’s chores. Thank you for sharing this.
What a great picture- it shows so much more than a studio picture, or posed portrait. It brought back memories of my childhood, too,how I used to pluck chicken feathers for a neighbor all day for 5 cents- this was enough for an ice cream cone, and since we lived in New Mexico, a great treat!
A great photograph. I wonder if they had just started plucking as there don’t seem to be masses of loose feathers and I can’t see sacks that they might have put them into. I imagine keeping the feathers was just as important as preparing the ducks for the table. I plucked two ducks myself once – not a nice job and hard on the fingers.