No, “Betty and the Jincks” is not a girl band (though in a different era, maybe it could have been). This is a photo in Mom’s album.

Above is Betty McClain with her Tallman neighbors the Jincks girls, playing with dolls. From left: Juanita Jincks, Betty McClain, Jessie Jincks, Blanchie Jincks. I estimate this photo was taken about 1924, judging from the ages of the girls. That year Juanita would have turned nine, Betty and Blanchie would have turned seven and Jessie would have turned four.

I’m sorry the faces are so dark. I lightened them as much as I could. You can see them a little better in the larger image (click on the image above). It’s a cute photo of the girls with their hats and their dolls and (I guess) their dress-up clothes.

The Jincks girls’ parents were Oscar and Rose. Oscar worked for the railroad. I learned from the 1940 census that they had been blessed with a son about 1926. They named him Arthur. Probably a coincidence. I couldn’t find the Jincks in the 1930 census, but they don’t appear to have been in Tallman anymore. In 1940 they were living in Halsey and Oscar was still working for the railroad. Arthur and Blanchie (now “Blanch May” and married), were living with their parents. These were war years, so Blanch’s husband may well have been in the military somewhere. Neither Juanita nor Jessie were living with their parents.

Mom’s actual caption for this photo, written when she was a teen, is “Betty and J…” where the writing after “J” is very faint and not clearly decipherable. (Possibly the ink has faded over the years.) Maybe if I’d run across the name “Jincks” before, I might have recognized it. But I hadn’t. I figured this word beginning with “J” was a name, and in the context probably a family name. But that was as far as I could go. I downloaded and scanned the mercifully short 1920 census for the Tallman Precinct looking for names beginning with “J”. When I found a family named “Jincks” with three daughters, I knew I’d found what I was looking for. And having found it, I could see how Mom’s writing, faint as it was, did spell out “Jincks.”