All of the photos in this album were taken by Dorothy Slack during the period from 1916 to1918 in which she met Ed Lindberg. The album begins in 1916 when she was 21 years old. She was the youngest of Edward and Elizabeth Slack's eight children. The family lived at 3149 S. Karlov Ave, Chicago 23, Illinois. Dorothy (Dot) was working in downtown Chicago for the Chicago Title and Trust Company as a stenographer and book keeper. She was very good at what she did (very fast and accurate, including shorthand dictation recording as well as typing and book keeping). She also taught these subjects at the Metropolitan Business School in Douglas Park, Chicago.

At the time she was taking these photos she was very active in her church, the Crawford Congregational Church on Keeler Avenue near 26th Street (link to map). She taught Sunday School and belonged to a young adult group called Christian Endeavor. She had just met Ednar Lindberg, who was her brother Herbert's roommate at the University of Illinois in Champagne/Urbana, Illinois. 

According to entries in her diary, at the time she met him he was nick named Swede and she seemed to be quite taken with him. You will see in this album that Ed first appears in civilian clothes and then in Army uniform. He became a 2nd Lieutenant in the Army Corps of Engineers and served in France. He came home in late summer or early fall of 1919. He went home to his family in Ishpeming, Michigan, then in October he went to Chicago where he and Dot were married in the front parlor of 3149. Ed was always very self conscious about taking part in ceremonies and didn't even tell his own family that he was going to Chicago to be married. Only Dot's family and friends attended the ceremony, on October 20, 1919.

Very soon after the wedding Dot and Ed left for Ishpeming and then Gwinn (link to map) where he and Dot set up housekeeping. Exactly when Ed informed his family of their marriage isn't known. There was some trepidation about Dot being a Cousin Jack (English) because of the ill feelings between Swedish miners and the British, who got the best jobs because of their experience in mining. (The same was true in the gold mines of California). Nevertheless, when Ed's family met Dot they liked her immediately and commented on how tiny she was, 5' 3" and 98 pounds. You will see in the pictures that her friends look large because Dot was small.

Dot's close friends appear again and again in this album, so after seeing them from various vantage points you will become familiar with them. As in the previous albums, Dot seemed to paste pictures into the album as she found them, so they often jump forward and backward in time. The captions will attempt to smooth out these inconsistencies. For some photos Dot wrote captions in her beautiful handwriting with white ink. Penmanship was one of the subjects she taught and hers was perfect, exactly what you see in charts on classroom walls.

Dot's mother Elizabeth was born in 1859, the oldest of 10 children whom she helped care for. She was 57 at the time of this picture but would be taken for 70 today (2003). People aged faster back then, partly because of the harder life. She also helped take care of the Nicholson farm (her maiden name) and taught all eight elementary grades in a one-room school. She was a little hunch backed from carrying little brothers and sisters when she was too young. She had eight of her own, with no electricity, no washing machine and then one powered by hand, ironing with heavy flat irons heated on the big black stoves, first on the farm and then in her own home.