Do you know there is a new Heritage/Genealogy forum here? I loved it and it inspired me to create this layout documenting real life Cinderella-type love story.


The journaling reads:

This photo was taken circa 1922. The girl with two long braids is my great grandmother Magda while she still lived in her parents' house. And so we assume the older woman is her mother, Magdalena (born 1873). As a 17-year-old girl, Magdalena had worked as a maid for a rich noble family in Estonia and caught the eye of the eldest son, Adolf, 14 years her senior
The family didn't mind the affair but were strongly opposed to the idea of the heir to the estate marring a servant. He insisted and his parents never forgave him for that. Disinherited and forbidden to ever set foot on family property again, it is said, he left with nothing, but the girl he loved. The truth might be slightly less dramatic and more prosaic, however it is a fact that that was the last time he saw his family. Magdalena and Adolf got married in 1892 and welcomed their first child in 1893.
Adolf didn't turn his back on who he was and how proud he was of his ancestry. He had two sons and three daughters before he died 15 years later in 1907. In memory of their father and to honor his wishes, his daughters kept their maiden name even after they got married.