Sepia Saturday 567 - Men On Horseback (1925)

There are very few photos of horses in my old photo albums, and even fewer of people riding one. The only one that comes to mind is this photo from my grandfather's album, with the subtitle "On horseback. Kviberg 1925". Kviberg was a Swedish artillery regiment in Gothenburg. Obviously this is where my grandfather did his mandatory military service. In 1925, he was 21 years old - the common age for conscription back then.

Who among the men on horseback is my grandfather? I know he must be one of the four in the middle, because there is another photo of him in that kind of uniform (but no horse):

My grandfather to the right,
a friend of his to the left.

I'm hesitating whether my grandfather is the 2nd or the 4th man wearing that kind of hat in the "horseback" photo. Hard to tell as one face is rather blurry, and the other has his hat pulled down over his eyes. Both seem to have the kind of oblong face that my grandfather had.

Whether they had any choice as to what kind of military service to do, I don't know. But I know that my grandfather's grandfather (with whom my grandfather grew up) used to be an artillery soldier. Back in his day, military service was organized a bit differently, though.

 

 Sepia Saturday 567

Post Office Letter Carriers - Sepia Saturday 473

My paternal grandfather, born 1904, was a journalist and photographer. I think this photo may have been taken by him in the mid 1920s.
 
The building is the railway station at Fristad (in the province of Västergötland, Sweden). The station house was built in 1900 - the same year my grandmother was born. (There had been an older wooden building before that.) 

The post office was also in the station house; and this photo obviously shows the postmen and coach drivers delivering the post to the village and surrounding countryside.

One of the men in this photo could be my grand-mother's older half-brother Carl. He was born in 1870 and died in 1928. Most likely the driver of the carriage on the right (without uniform).
 
Their father (my great-grandfather) Samuel, born 1835, was a farmer, and also used to deliver post back in the 1890s. The story in the family is that he met his second wife, my great-grandmother Selma, in a country store to which he delivered the post. He was a widower with several grown-up and nearly grown-up children then; while Selma was a younger widow with one daughter from her first marriage. They got married in 1898; and my grandmother Sally was born in 1900.

When Samuel retired from farming in 1903 (he died in 1907), his oldest son Carl took over the farm, and also the delivery of post. 

I posted the same photo on my blog Greetings from the past back in 2013, then linked to Sepia Saturday 182. Back then, I still had the identities of two of my grandmother's older brothers mixed up. But if the one in this photo is Carl, who died in 1928, that narrows down the date of the photo to that year at the latest. And if the photographer was my grandfather (born in 1904) I don't think it can be earlier than 1922 (probably later). 

Maybe... Just a guess, but it suddenly strikes me that 1925 may have been an occasion to have such a photo taken (and perhaps published in the local newspaper?), as that would be the 25th anniversary of the station house.

Below are two postcards published by Swedish Post in 1969, showing postal coaches from the 1880s (owned by the Post Museum since the early 1900s).

Linking to:
Sepia Saturday 473