Treasure Thursday - Poppy's locket

The locket with it's mystery photograph

We lived in my mother's last house for several years after her death.  I found a cigar box full of mostly unidentified things - pocket watches, big buttons, lockets.  This one had the note inside saying "? In locket in Daddy's things".  I do not know who the women are.  The initials on the front seem to be H.J.G.  My grandfather's name was Mershell C. Graham.  His story is sketchy.

M.C. Graham

I find bits and pieces - unidentified photographs.... If I could just find him in the 1900 census with a family.  He was born in Coosada Station, Elmore County, alabama about 1888.  He chose to celebrate on Christmas day because he didn't know the actual day.  By the time I found him in the census in 1910 he was working on the railroad.  He moved to Detroit in 1917, married my grandmother in 1918 in Montgomery and they immediately removed to Detroit.  He worked at Ford Motor Co. for years, in the parts section.  He was a founder and trustee at Plymouth Congregational Church in Detroit.  He always grew a large, wonderful garden with cabbage, collards and tomatoes.  He could (and did) fix anything that needed fixing.  He taught himself to read so I assume he never went to school.  There is a story that he was a servant and slept outside the little girls door at night.  The other story is that his parents came one one rainy day (from work?) to find him and his brother digging sweet potatoes out in the garden.  They had the measles. I'm thinking they were very hungry.  Who feels like digging in the rain when they have the measles?  There were three other children.  One sister named Annie, a brother who went west named Bill and an unnamed brother.  Perhaps the Jacob named in front of the little Bible that was also in the box.