Laura Henricks

(Click on image to enlarge)
Image courtesy of N.B.

This is from Mildred Lindborg's photo album, but it's worthy of the bleakest art film. I don't know what effect the photographer was going for; it was probably by accident that he/she produced a statement about the unbridgeable distance that separates each individual from the rest of humanity. Here Laura is the ostensible subject, but the clearest thing in the whole photo is the shadow of the audience. Laura's face is so out of focus as to be unrecognizable except through Mildred's caption. She is distant, alone, unknowable. "We are all sentenced to solitary confinement inside our own skins, for life," said Tennessee Williams. And so says this photo.

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Getting back to more mundane things — in case you didn't recognize it, that's the Lindborg house in Ainsworth, in the background at left, and part of the Lindborg blacksmith business at right.

As for Laura Henricks, I think I have found her in the 1910 census (but spelled "Hendricks"). If so, Laura was born around 1903 and had two younger siblings, Freddie and Mable. Her 31-year-old, widowed father, Charlie, farms his own land, which appears (judging by who his neighbors are) to be in northeast Ross Township. Charlie employs his own 24-year-old half-sister, Amanda Henning, as housekeeper.

I can't find them in any other census.

In my newspaper notes, I find a "Chas. Hendricks" in 1907 reportedly buying the farm of William Smith (brother of Cyrus) (but I don't find that ownership reflected in the 1908 plat map). In 1916, a social column reported that Mabel and Laura Henricks visited their aunt, Mrs. Emil Wojahn, in Chicago. In October 1918, Fred Henricks was one of five patients of Dr. C.C. Brink who underwent operations at Mercy Hospital for "diseased tonsils and adenoids."

And that's all I have on the Henrickses, or Hendrickses. Laura remains distant, out of focus, unknowable. That photo could represent all the subjects of this blog.



Sources:
♦ 1908 Plat Map.
♦ 1910 Census.
♦ "Local Drifts." Hobart Gazette 4 Oct. 1907.
♦ "Ross Township News." Hobart Gazette 29 Dec. 1916; 25 Oct. 1918.