Koontz 2nd Hand Store – January 1904

I was going through my photo file this afternoon and came across this on of my great grandparents’ store in Columbus, Ohio.  In a rare piece of luck, their daughter, my grandmother, actually wrote on the back of the studio card with the date it was taken and identifying the persons (most of them) that were in the picture.  I sent the sepia tinted image off the #MyHeritage to have the color added.   Per Grandma Florence:

Koontz 2nd Hand Store, January 1904.  From left to right: Mr. Perdue (helper), Florence [my grandmother], Phebie [my great grandmother Koontz], Henry, Grandpa Gardner [Phebie’s father, William G. Gardner, nee Wilhelm Gotthardt Gaertner, my great great grandfather], Bill, Essie, Cass P. [my great grandfather Koontz].

Grandma Florence did not identify the two people in the upper balcony.  The only one of her siblings missing from the ground floor was her sister, Ethel.  There is no indication of who the child might be.  The next generation of the Koontz family had not begun.  Grandfather Gardner was between wives (just divorced #3 and had not married #4, and there were only children from the first two.