The Cleage’s View A Plane – 1921

Looking at a plane in a field about 1921

This week’s Sepia Saturday features an old airplane.  I have two photographs of a small, old plane in my Cleage collection.  Unfortunately there is nothing written on the back of either photo but I recognize my aunt Barbara – the baby in white, and the edge of my great grandmother Celia on the right edge.  

Plane in field about 1921
Another view of the plane.

Here is a photograph of my family standing in a field in Detroit, about 1921.

Standing in a field

My grandfather Dr. Albert B. Cleage, Sr holding baby Barbara. next to him in my father Albert Jr, standing to the far right is my great grandmother, Albert Senior’s mother. My uncle Louis is front left, Henry is between Louis and Hugh who is standing with his hands on his hips.

My grandmother and great grandmother look tired out.

Front row: my uncle Louis and my father Albert. In the back row: My grandmother Pearl holding baby Barbara, Henry, Hugh, Great grandmother Celia. My aunt Barbara was born July 10, 1920 in Detroit, Michigan.

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Related Air around Detroit in 1922

Air Race – Detroit October 1922

Selfridge Field and the beginnings of air power

16 thoughts on “The Cleage’s View A Plane – 1921

  1. Wow, photos from 1920=21. Those are wonderful, and you knew which relatives you could recognize. That plane looks mighty big.

    1. I did know all of them, except my great grandmother who died in 1933. 1921 doesn’t seem so far to me, but I guess it is over 100 years ago, isn’t it?

  2. I can well imagine Pearl & Celia looking tired out what with four probably rambunctious little boys and a baby to look after on an outing. Oof. 🙂

  3. All of your photos are special, but the one with the plane is pretty extraordinary. I’ll bet not many people have a photo of their family surveying a plane over 100 years ago. I wonder about the occasion.

    1. 100 years gets closer and closer the older I get. There were just 25 years from the time of this photo until I was born in 1946.

  4. A perfect match for the theme this weekend. I wonder what the occasion was. Maybe a mail plane that had to make an emergency landing? Most of the biplanes like that were flown by former military aviators who trained for service in France. They had a short range so it took several days to fly across the country. No radio or navigation instruments except for a map and compass.

    1. I wondered too. I looked in the paper and found a contest but it was canceled. I guess I will never know why that pilot was in that field and why my family was there.

  5. I think the plane is a Curtiss JN-4, which is the plane that Bessie Colman flew. It wouldn’t be her though as she was flying in 1922. Those old pilots did land in fields like that, or maybe it was an air show. Wonderful photos!

    1. I wonder if they were just out for a drive and happened upon a plane in a field. Maybe. Henry said they used to ride their bikes out to the country from their house, which is now in the middle of the city. And that would have been several years later as the boys were too young to be riding out into the country in the picture.

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