One of the photos that I keep in my family archive is an oval shaped photo of my grandfather as an infant. Frank was the father of my mother Louise Eleanor Schlick Davis. The photo was taken around 1911 within a year after his birth. He is most likely dressed in his christening gown when he was baptisted into the Roman Catholic faith at St. John the Baptist Church in Winfield Illinois. This was the same church where his parents (Casper and Susan (Daleiden) Schlick in 1906) and grandparents (Christopher and Margaret (Weidner) Deleiden in 1867) were married.

The oval shaped convex glass that once covered this photo was broken quite some time ago. The original photo was printed on a cardboard stock and is in very poor shape. “Although oval and round picture frames make up less than 5% of all picture frames produced today, this has not always been the case. Over half of the picture frames produced in America by some the largest picture frame factories in the late 1800’s up to about 1940 were oval, round, octagon or other unusually shaped picture frames. Most of these frames were used to display family portraits with convex glass. Many attics and basements are home to these family heirlooms framed in antique frames and often broken convex bubble glass” (Source Accessed August 5, 2022: Over Crest Co.). The gold painted oval wood frame is still in good condition after 111 +/- years. In 1983 I brought the original photograph to Marshall Fields at the Oakbrook Shopping Center Mall in Oakbrook Illinois. My father George Davis worked at Sears at the same mall from the time the Mall opened in1959 until the time of his retirement. At the time Fields was providing a promotion via their downtown flagship store on State Street via their Marshall Fields Photo Studios and offering photo restoration work. For the price of $48.50 I splerged and had the photo reproduced, retouched and restored. Additional details within the photo emerged – his crop of thick black hair in the middle of his head and the design on the pillow for instance.

Frank grew up and lived all of his life in DuPage County within Winfield Township and in the Village of Winfield and the City of Warrenville in Illinois. Frank and Mae Hodous Schlick never ventured far from their homes. They never took extended vacations. This may be rooted I surmise in their committment to the daily needs and demands of farm life and frugality learned while growing up during the Great Depression. They were honest hardworking and simple people. Frank was the farm manager at St. James Farm from the mid 1950s to the time of his retirement. St James located in Warrenville Illinois was the former dairy and esquestrian estate farm of Brooks McCormick the CEO of International Harvester Co. of Chicago. It is now part of the Forest Preserve District of DuPage County Illinois.