My photo file tells a story

While looking at my photo files, discovered two big fat files that hadn't yet been processed. I'm a little miffed that I've overlooked these treasures when I would have bet that all the photos had been properly processed by photo editing, sorting and naming, with details put in labels within the file. But I'm also thrilled that there are more delicious pictures. So off I went to start that task and that's gonna take time. That's OK because I just love working with old family photos.

What I realized when looking through the yet to be sorted files as well as the older sorted photos is that they tell the story of photography in our family as well as photography in general and in the small Western Maryland world in which the taking of photos in our family operated. So I'd like to share with you what I observed, here in this post.

The oldest photos come from the mid 1800s, about 1850 or 1860 and on to about 1910-ish. They are formal portraits taken by professional photographers in their studios. There were a number of photographers operating in Western Maryland then. A couple in Cumberland, the largest town in the region, and two or three in Frostburg which is smaller and situated just west on the Old Pike or National Road, a major route west before the railroad came to the area. Let's start with a couple of those images.

The above was taken by a photographer named E. Gilbert Irwin and bound up in a book documenting the National Road about 1910 which Mom has in her collection. As far as I've been able to discover he did this project under the auspices of the management of the National Road.

The small plate in the rear of the book identifies him by name, and you can see that up top. The middle image shows the border of Maryland and Pennsylvania where the Maryland road work ends. As you can see, It looked bad for Maryland and the state of the road is pretty awful compared to how Pennsylvania took care of their portion of the road. That would have been a perfect shot to document the need for more Maryland funds to be allocated. The last image is included just because it's one of my favorites. Plus it was probably handy in demonstrating the general terrain which was farmland and forest. This image is often referred to as an example of the photographer's artistic eye, and indeed while this album had a practical use, it is a work of art, as well of history.

The real formal studio portraits are a treasure to us, and I bet you have your own grouping of these. Here are just a few. I love to look at what our ancestors are wearing. I'll put these in presumed order by date with the oldest first. They stop about 1913 with the formal wedding portrait of Dad's parents and they were married September 30, 1913.

Enoch Clise (1843 - 1896) in his Civil War uniform. He is not an old man here and died in 1896, which leaves a window of about 1865 to 1880-ish. Maybe.

They were married 19 April, 1878 and this is thought to be their wedding portrait.

Joseph E Whetstone 1816-1897.
He is quite old here so maybe about 1890?

 

 

His son, Joseph Hampton Whetstone (1858 - 1939) on the right, in his Frostburg Fire Department uniform. Date about 1890s, maybe.

Moretta Workman 1859-1946.
Maybe she's in her 20s here?

Moretta's husband, Gustav Zeller 1858 - 1925.
Wondering if these two images were their wedding portraits? If so then there would have been a couple photo. None of the relatives seem to have that. Too bad.

Their daughter and my paternal grandma, Helen Zeller Kelly 1894-1985. About 1900.

Wedding photos, 1913.

 

 When Grandma, above, married Grandpop, John Lee Kelly (1892 - 1969) these two photos of his family were also taken. That's he and his mother in the oval, and the whole Kelly bunch, with labels.

 

I like to examine all of the formal portraits we have and especially the backgrounds to see which were taken in the same studio. Those big backdrops are a good clue!

Just about the time Mom was born in 1918, the informal snapshots start to appear. These are wonderfully plentiful and their informality tells so much about the people in them. I'll just share a few for your enjoyment.

 

 

Mom with her parents, Emma Susan (Whetstone) Williams (1897 - 1956) and Cambria Williams (1897 - 1960).

John Lee Kelly (1892 - 1969) with his children, about 1925.

Mom with a kitten.

Joseph Hampton Whetstone (1858 - 1939) who we saw in his fire department uniform, above. What a difference! This image tells a broader story of family as he and his wife Catherine Elizabeth (House) Whetstone (1865 - 1947) sit with some of their grandchildren, Mom in the big hair bow.

These pictures tell, I think, a fuller story, about the family and times. The frequency of the images and their abundance tell me that it was easy and relatively inexpensive for the family to take their own photos. They are, of course, less formal by stretches! The family would have chosen, as we all do, where and when the picture was to be made so it tells even more about them. Plus, and I really like this, it catches them in their every-day clothes. Candid's: gotta love them!

Mom with her camera, August 1942.



After this date, photos in our file multiply like rabbits. Mom has a camera and is obviously using it. I bet she got it for her birthday on July 29. I mean now that I think about it, if you have your own camera you are going to take pictures, for sure!

Do you remember your first camera? I sure do. And the thrill of going to the drug store to pick up the processed photos to see how they came out? I usually went with friends. Once you have your own camera, you are free to capture your personal world as you see it, and that makes all the difference to those of us interested in family history. We get to see the family as it saw itself, or at least as one member saw it.

Here are some images from Mom, as photo documentarian. I won't label them because I want you to look at the content of the images and se what they tell.

 

Yeah, it's all there in those pictures: all the family history of the most recent generations. Wouldn't it be wonderful if every generation going back just five or six had their own cameras with which to document family? Wouldn't that be a treasure?

And so I ask myself, what with all the new media, are we taking enough photos? I wonder if I am?


The URL for this post is: http://nutsfromthefamilytree.blogspot.com/2013/12/my-photo-file-tells-story.html

Thoughtful Tuesday: Young and Old, Grandma Kelly

I love the Geneablogger's wonderful Daily Blogging Prompts because they lend structure to my blog posts and keep me moving through the week. They inspired me to make up a couple of themes on my own: DNA Monday, and The Creative Process on occasional Fridays. I had the idea for another theme while at an Eric Burdon concert on Sunday evening. Hey, ideas come at all times and places:)

Here's the concept: contrast what is known about an ancestor in their youth with the way they were in their maturity or old age. You see, there was Eric Burdon giving a knock-out performance and yet I could see in my mind's eye his young face super-imposed over the old rocker before me belting out "We Gotta Get Outta This Place." His age hadn't taken a thing away from his talents but rather added a new and deeper dimension to his performance. So I wondered if that was also true of ancestors? Let's try one and see, shall we?

Here are two photos of my paternal grandmother, Helen Zeller Kelly (1894 - 1985). The first one was taken when she was just a girl and the apple of her father's eye. Her father, Gustav "Gus" Zeller (1858 - 1925) was a very successful barber with a large barber shop with bathtubs and all, right on Main Street in Frostburg, Allegany County, Maryland. The large and prosperous coal mining community insured that there was a constant steady stream of men who needed a bath, hair cut and shave. Gus invested his earnings in property which were mostly rentals. And nothing was too good for his only daughter.

Look at her outfit! And that big grin on her face! Her hat, her stance, and that fur muff all of it tells of a well-off life and its enjoyment. I love this picture of her because she looks so young and carefree. And, I think, lovely and very sweet. Was she a tad spoiled? Oh, perhaps:) She always got her way!

 

 

Below is Grandma Kelly, as I always called her, in the 1940s. She'd raised six kids during the Great Depression and now three of her four boys were going off to war. She's standing in the back yard on a cold winter day, perhaps late fall or before the mercies of spring arrived, with someone else's jacket that doesn't quite fit, on her shoulders. She's wearing her usual house dress and apron and there's a cold wind blowing her skirt. But to my eye she stands solid as a rock in sensible shoes and hands folded across her middle. She stands on her own land, in her own yard on the property her father left her.

 



The URL for this post is: http://nutsfromthefamilytree.blogspot.com/2013/04/thoughtful-tuesday-young-and-old.html

Tombstone Tuesday: The Great Grands

So here it is Tuesday again, and let's take a look at some tombstones, these from Mom's photo collection. Tombstone Tuesday is a weekly blogging prompt from GeneaBloggers. You can find the whole week's list of prompts here.

 

This time we're looking at all of my great grands.

First are Dad's Father's parents and there's a Surname Saturday post about the Kelly line here. 

Then on Dad's mother's side are the Zellers. You can read about these Zellers in a Surname Saturday post here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mom's father's side, Daniel and Jane Price Williams are explained in a Surname Saturday post here.

And Mom's mother's side are the Whetstones and you can read about thm here.

 

 

 

All of these grandparents are buried in the cemeteries of Frostburg, Maryland. The Kelly - Zeller side are at St Michaels' Cemetery (Catholic) and the Willimas - Whetstone are at the Frostburg Memorial Park. Makes it easy to decorate the graves:)

The URL for this post is: http://nutsfromthefamilytree.blogspot.com/2013/02/tombstone-tuesday-great-grands.html

More Drinking Stories

A number of humorous family stories on my Dad's side start with the phrase, "He'd been drinking a bit." I've posted here about my Dad's maternal grandparents, Ma and Pa, Ma being Moretta Workman Zeller (3 April 1859 - 24 MAR 1946) and Pa being Gustav Zeller (3 FEB 1858 - 12 Mar 1927). Pa owned a couple of very prosperous barber shops in Western Maryland and there was money around so life was enjoyed in that way. Ma... well she just ruled her kingdom, so to speak.

Pa liked to drink. We are guessing that it might have been a tad stressful to run his barbering empire and live with Ma. So he liked to go on drinking binges, or as the family called them, "go on a toot." Don't know where that expression came from but it was around. Pa would disappear for a couple weeks or a couple of months, hire a hotel room and enjoy himself to the max.

He liked to go up to Pennsylvania but sometimes he'd just go on down to Cumberland from his home in Frostburg, Maryland, a trip of under 10 miles. Once (and probably more than once) he took a room in the Queen City Hotel. The lobby of the hotel doubled as the ticket office for the railroad station. It was grand in it's day. Sad to say, it was demolished in the 1960s for an urban renewal project, back when urban renewal trumped preservation. Here's a link to info about the old Queen City Hotel on WIKI: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_City_Hotel

The old Queen City Hotel, Cumberland MD.

Pa always took a room with a balcony. See the balcony rooms there? One time he even hired a band to play just for him. It was the Arion Band of Frostburg, still in existence and one of the oldest community bands in the USA. See info on WIKI: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arion_Band

Ma got a bit tired of Pa's disappearing act so she hauled his sorry self off to Chicago where his parents resided. Ma thought that should straighten him out! What she found was that Pa's father liked to drink as much as Pa did, so off they'd go! Ma and Pa's son Gus (Dad's Uncle Gus) was born there in Chicago.

Pa's father, Charles William Zeller (May 1829, Germany - 17 MAY 1901, Chicago) and mother, Mary (APR 1816 Germany - 11 SEP 1906 Chicago) are also interesting an have some family stories behind them. He was a confectioner, a candy maker, and she a diabetic. See how funny life is?

Gustav Zeller (3 FEB 1858 - 12 MAR 1927).
A very well-groomed man! It was his business after all:)

The first streetcar comes to Frostburg, MD.
See Pa, Gustav Zeller, in the lower left quadrant

in his white barber coat?

Ma, Moretta Workman Zeller
(3 APR 1859 - 24 MAR 1946)