I imagine most of you have seen this photo before at one time or another. To my knowledge this is the only one of the children on the homestead in Alberta (well, not quite), and one of very few at all from that period, that I am aware of.

This is, of course, the eldest five of John and Minnie Wright’s children, standing outside the sod house they lived in on the homestead in Alberta, Canada. Judging by the ages of the children, this picture must have been taken about 1913.

The children, from left, are: Anna, Earl, Irvine, Ed and Lloyd (Dad).

Even though Dad is next-oldest, he is noticeably smaller than his younger siblings Ann and Ed. Even as a six-foot-tall, 200 pound adult, he (more or less accurately) considered himself “the runt of the bunch.”

Irvine, at 11 or so years old, towers over his siblings.

A sod house was typically a temporary structure used as living quarters until a homesteading family could establish themselves and construct something permanent. In the case of the Wrights, they lived in the sod house from when they arrived in 1911 until a frame house was finally built in 1918. By then the sod house required braces outside to keep the walls from collapsing outward.

At right in the background is a pile of rocks and boulders that were pulled from the surrounding virgin prairie with a team of horses to open it up for farming.

This picture could be titled “Meanwhile, 200 Miles to the North” as a follow-on to yesterday’s PotD. Yesterday’s photo and today’s were taken within a year of each other, but what a contrast of conditions! While Grandpa’s brothers Will and Richard and sister May appear to be living reasonably comfortable lives, Grandpa and his family are living in abject poverty on the edge of civilization.