Margaret Jane (Caine) Schofield: d. 1912
Sometime several months ago my dad and I flipped through some of his old photo albums (that I think I'd brought him from Charlotte) and there were a handful of deteriorating photographs I encouraged he scan to preserve. In September he sent me copies. This picture was taken before 1909 and features from left to right Margaret Jane (Caine) Schofield--she died in 1912 when dad's dad was just three years old--Leona (Schofield) ?--dad's aunt in Colorado, and Guy Schofield: "Guy (right) was my favorite uncle - a barber by trade - who lived alternately in California & Michigan over many years. He’s the one who died from a heart attack while behind the wheel of his car, just outside of Union City, in 1958 and whose gravesite we have visited whenever we visit Mom, Dad, my brother Al, and my grandpa."
I skimmed my dad's memoir for mention of Margaret Jane and saw only that "Grandpa had outlived several wives including my grandma, the former Margaret Jane Caine. I vaguely remember his last wife, Nola, who abandoned him in later years after he was disabled by a stroke." Of Leona I couldn't find anything.
I look at Margaret Jane and I think Victorian and poor which probably comes from images I have scene depicting Irish-American migration (and probably the third class as shown in Titanic), and a cursory googling suggests relatives of hers may've held county seat in Londonderry. Since Floyd Schofield (my grandpa) was born in Durand, Wisconsin only a few years after this picture was taken, 140 miles west of a Schofield, Wisconsin, this picture was probably taken there.
Compare Margaret Jane's dress with Guy's pseudo-American-Gothic getup, and on what looks like to be a worn-down lawn with little Leona in the middle (somewhat Guy-ward), and I think it makes an interesting spectrum of culture of a nostalgic Victorian sensibility approaching World War I and the Great Depression that sent Floyd to California and back looking for work.
I'm a little amused that I share initials with her--Michael James Schofield--and that, like her, I was more or less inducted such than born into. And I wonder what she was like.