Nineteenth century households often included three generations of a family. Grandparents, parents and children all lived, worked, and played together. This photograph by Frances and Mary Allen of Deerfield, Massachusetts, portrays the skill and patience that makes playing a quiet game of checkers well-suited for this elderly woman and girl. The Allen sisters specialized in portraiture and posed images that illustrated what many, in the increasingly industrialized world at the turn of the 20th century, felt was a simpler, more idyllic way of life.