1945 United States

About this footage

A father lifts his daughter in a blue dress on a Florida lawn, and that kind of backyard is where most of this 1945 collection was filmed. Toddlers in sunbonnets and overalls run across the grass with stuffed rabbits and teddy bears, a girl smiles with an orange, and a girl in a yellow swimsuit covers her eyes in a game. Mothers hang laundry, sweep a doorway and reach for red hibiscus while the children play at their feet. One reel shows a sailor in white uniform walking, and another a sailor father visiting home with his child. Away from the house, the camera turns to a palm-lined canal with a dock, waterfront homes along a channel, white houses with striped awnings and a seaside resort with manicured lawns facing the ocean.

In Washington, DC, the family kept filming a little girl in red. Wearing a coat, a dress or a pinafore, she runs across shaded lawns, chases squirrels and birds in the park and walks down stone steps with her mother. Behind her are the U.S. Capitol dome, a seated statue outside the Supreme Court and white classical buildings with columns. There is a museum visit too. The Illinois reels come from Elmwood Park, and much of that footage is winter: a heavy blizzard seen through a window, brick and wooden houses blanketed in snow, a snow-covered farmhouse and a man adjusting his camera in the snow. On dry sidewalks, a mother helps her son balance on roller skates and a well-dressed boy rides his tricycle down the street. A sailboat with a billowing sail turns up on one Illinois reel.

Useful for stories on sailors visiting family in 1945, children at Washington, DC landmarks, or snowbound Midwestern suburbs.