Poverty was written all over their faces. We now know the names of an Akron family whose haunting portrait served as an iconic image of the Great Depression.

The black-and-white photograph, which lacked caption information, had been filed away for 75 years at the Beacon Journal before it was reprinted last month to illustrate an article about living conditions in the 1930s. The poignant picture shows a weary young mother and nine scruffy children accepting relief packages at the doorstep of their home.

With pursed lips and a clenched jaw, the housewife displays a range of emotions, from sadness to determination to humiliation. Her hastily gathered children, who resemble a casting call for an Our Gang movie, have unwashed faces, soiled clothes and scuffed shoes.

Two local grandmothers stared at the June 23 portrait in disbelief.

''My daughter called and she told my husband: 'Look at the paper,' '' said Jean Cornwell, 77, of Tallmadge. ''She thinks that's my family — from the ages and the sequence of the kids. She could tell by the eyes on some of them.''

In an instant, Cornwell hurtled back through time. She recognized her mother, Georgia Doyle, who was in her late 20s when the photo was taken around 1933. Cornwell, who was about 2 at the time, is pictured in her mother's arms.

Cornwell rushed to call her sister Martha Jackson, 79, of Perry Township. In the portrait, Martha stands at the top of the wooden steps, a striped-stocking girl of 5 who shyly covers her mouth with her hand.

''We've never seen that photo,'' Jackson said. ''I look at the expression of my mother. You talk about a lost soul. . . . This looks like a family that's been hidden in a shed somewhere for many years, and really doesn't know what life is all about.''

It was a crowded house on Dennison Avenue in Ellet. Georgia Doyle had three children — Jane, Willa Mae and Martha — from a previous marriage. She married widower William J. Doyle, a long-distance truck driver, who brought children Eva, Thomas, Adeline and Chuck.

The couple had five more kids together: Jean, John, Leona, Jim and Dale. In other words, Georgia Doyle's family grew by three after the newspaper photo.

''Maybe she didn't realize what she was getting into,'' Cornwell said.

In a 1933 letter from St. Louis, William Doyle wrote to his wife: ''I love you just as much as I ever did and always will love you with all my heart, darling. Take good care of the kids till I get home.''

Children slept four to a bed in a home without indoor plumbing. They carried buckets of water from a nearby spring and later pumped water from a well in the backyard.

When the weather was nice, the kids took baths in the spring, but eventually did most of their washing in a big metal tub at home. One at a time, the 12 children used the same tub.

''By the time it got to me, I didn't want to go into that water,'' Jackson said.

Summer was no vacation for the children. Their maternal grandmother, Mary Lee Hopkins, the family disciplinarian, made sure of it.

''Grandma took every vacant lot in that area, and she put in a garden,'' Cornwell said. ''You didn't dare say you were bored, because you went to the garden.''

''We call it a garden, but it really was farming,'' Jackson said. ''Row after row after row.''

Sunburn after sunburn after sunburn. The children raised vegetables all summer, harvested crops and canned surplus.

They built a pit fire outside and boiled water for canning — using the same metal tub they did for baths.

''I don't remember ever getting a hug or a kiss goodnight,'' Jackson said. ''I think by the end of the day, everybody was so exhausted, we just wanted everybody to go to sleep. We worked hard from the youngest right on up to the oldest.''

One time when Cornwell was about 7 years old, she decided she was going to run away from home, but she didn't know how.

''So I got under the bed and I stayed there,'' she said. ''Oh, it seemed like hours I looked up at the springs. I stayed there, and I thought they'd miss me. I came out, and Mom and Mae were in the kitchen doing dishes. Nobody even knew I was missing.''

Of course, there were happy moments. Once in a while on Fridays, Chestnut Ridge Dairy would clean out its freezers and give away stale ice cream to neighborhood children.

''We ate ice cream until we'd get sick,'' Jackson said. ''I mean, that was a treat.''

Cornwell recalls when she accidentally dropped her cone in a pile of cinders on the road:

''You know what I did? I picked that up and scooped that top off of it, cleaned it up and ate it. I couldn't give that up.''

The kids seldom owned toys. At Christmas, the family didn't have trees or gifts. Jackson recalls receiving apples, oranges and candy from charity baskets.

The newspaper took the family's photo for the Mile of Dimes, a charity fund to help the 3,000 neediest households in Akron.

''We were so poor, and we didn't even know it,'' Jackson said.

She didn't begin to notice the disparity until a girl at school invited her to spend the night. The visitor felt like a guest at a resort.

''I thought they were filthy rich,'' Jackson said. ''She had her own room.''

When Jackson got her first job — slinging hamburgers at an Ellet diner — she said goodbye to her hand-me-down footwear, which she repaired with pieces of cardboard and inner tubes.

''The first thing I did was buy a pair of shoes,'' she said. ''It was like, 'Wow.' I got to try them on, I got to make sure they fit.''

William Doyle provided for his family as best he could, but Jackson thinks he dreaded coming home. The solitude of the truck cab was a far cry from the commotion of the house.

After the Depression ended, Doyle finally saved enough money to buy his own truck, but fate was not kind. He became seriously ill in the late 1940s, and died of a brain tumor at age 49 in 1950. His widow had to sell the truck for a loss.

The sisters don't recall Georgia Doyle ever giggling or laughing when they were young. She was always too busy cooking, washing, sewing and providing for the family.

That constant concern is all too apparent in the 1930s photo.

''To look at that face of my mother, it just tears you apart,'' Jackson said.

''I look back and think 'How did she have any sense at all?' '' Cornwell
said. ''I would have been insane.''

It wasn't until years later, when the children grew up, that their mother found time to enjoy life. The sad, weary woman gradually disappeared.

''The personality of my mother did not show up until after all the kids were gone,'' Jackson said. ''It was like a metamorphosis. She'd laugh. She was just a real kick in the pants.''

In later years, Georgia Doyle served as a housemother for Goodwill Industries and received a certificate of honor in 1961 for her work at Friendship House in Akron.

''She went right back to mothering again,'' Cornwell said. ''That's all she knew what to do.''

Georgia Doyle was 63 when she died in 1968. Near the end of her life, she found happiness.

''The last six or seven years, she really enjoyed herself,'' Jackson said. ''I thought, 'You deserve every bit of it.' What a life.''

The sisters looked once more at the 1930s photo in disbelief.

''I didn't realize we were different,'' Cornwell said.

''That's a life we lived and didn't know it,'' Jackson said. ''We didn't really know it.''