My mom flew in today (more pics on that to come; meanwhile, suffice to say she can't quit telling us she's in love with her grandson) and brought this picture of Jasper's namesake - Jasper Newton Prince Jr. (March 4, 1881-July 11, 1918). He is our Jasper's great-great grandfather on my father's side.
You can see from the markings at the top that the original, which hangs in my parents' house, is an oval-shaped print. And the line running through his hat shows how old it is because that's where the picture broke apart when they took it out of the frame years ago to make a copy.
I suppose in everyone's childhood homes hangs a long-gone relative's portrait from which, you'd swear, the eyes followed you when you got up in the night for a snack or to use the bathroom or maybe even to sneak out. This was that picture in my house growing up.
The hat.
The cigarette.
The buttoned-all-the-way-up shirt.
I mean, when you're about 13 years old, you think anyone who got their portrait made with a cigarette dangling from his lips, clearly, was a man not to be messed with -- much less to do mischief under the nose of in the dark of night. It's only tonight, so many years later, that I noticed for the first time the doorway or whatever that is over his shoulder. As a kid, I never -- ever -- managed to get past the face. As far as I was concerned, there was nothing but the face.
I wrote a little about Jasper Junior -- and his wife, whom I trace my Choctaw heritage back to -- in 2004. Here's the related passage, which gives a little more background on the man and his life:
Eliza Walker, my great-grandmother, is the bedrock of what I've always known to be my Choctaw ancestry.
Eliza, an original Choctaw enrollee who stopped speaking her native language as a child to avoid discrimination, married Jasper Prince Jr., an Irishman, in 1903 after meeting him at a church social. His family disowned him because of the interracial union.
Undaunted, Jasper and Eliza pressed on. They farmed the allotment that was one of the few benefits her roll number offered. They had seven children, and Jasper, planning for his growing family, borrowed against the land. Then he died in 1918 at age 37, leaving his wife with a row of mouths to feed and a stack of bills to pay.
A widow at 31 with children ranging in age from 6 months to 13 years, Eliza lost the land as she struggled to hold her family together. She persevered, though, serving as her brood's unbreakable bond through the highs and lows of the 60 years that followed.
She died in 1981 at age 94, a slight but commanding woman who always was the anchor of stability in the family.
In that portrait I can see some of the qualities that have come down from Jasper to his son Elmer to his sons Randy (my dad) and Darryll (my uncle), then to me and, perhaps, to this new Jasper.
Our Jasper.
Like I said, I could never get past Jasper Newton's face in the portrait as a kid. Now, it's funny, but I can't get past Jasper Elliott's face in front of me today.
I'm entranced by both. Just for different reasons.
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