William Earl "Mick" Burnett and Ruth Loretta Scott, sometime in the mid-to-late twenties. Married 13 November 1928, Umatilla County, OR.

This is the mother from the "Ritter Family" picture. My only clue to when the picture might have been taken is that she died in 1898. She looks old in this picture, except that her hair doesn't look gray. She lived to be 79. She was a pioneer; she and her husband crossed the prairies from Indiana to Oregon in the 1840's, and with four small children with them. Their youngest child, Amanda, was the only one to be born in Oregon.

She's looking solemn for the camera, but I see a glint of good humour there, all the same.

Solomon Ritter and Family—wife Elizabeth (Hardman),
daughters Mary Ellen, Lucinda E., and Amanda Elizabeth. Picture presumably taken prior to 1873, when Mary Ellen married John Leedy, her sister Margretta’s widower. There was also a son, Lewis Ritter. Lucinda married Edwin R. Osterhoudt; Amanda married Noah Nathaniel Bashor (1884). Lewis married Elizabeth Carothers (1870). From the apparent age of Amanda (I am guessing she is 8—10 years old) I think the picture was taken no later than 1868. If she was 8, that would make the other girls 15 and 17, which looks about right. I believe Mary is the girl on the left, Lucinda ("Lou") on the right.

Solomon, Elizabeth, and their older children emigrated from Indiana to Linn County, Oregon in the early 1850s. Amanda, my great-grandmother, was born there in 1858.