Carte de Visite/Ohio

Well, I haven't put up a carte de visite for awhile so I thought I'd put these two up. Other than that they are both from Ohio, they aren't related in anyway. The profile has a studio mark on the back, "Geo R. Elliott, S.W. Corner High and Town Streets. Columbus, Ohio" And written, "Julianne Elizabeth Anthony (Mother)" Elliott was born in 1837 and had a studio in Columbus from 1870-86. A photographer for hire, his specialty was stereoscopic views. In 1886 he became the employee of James Madison Elliott, presumably a relative, who in addition to being a photographer was also a painter and crayon artist. Neither man was a great talent, but they made a living at it. On the mother/daughter portrait (I'm guessing), written on the back, "Jennie E. & Bell M. Norris, Stryker, Ohio" Stryker is in the northwest corner of the state, near the Michigan border. Click on either cdv or carte de visite in the labels section to see a lot more. The carte de visite was an early attempt at a standardized photographic format. They were small albumen prints mounted on a card, approximately 2.5x4.25 inches. While some people did in fact use them as visiting cards, they were usually given as keepsakes to friends and family. In the 1860s and 70s, the term cartomania was used to describe the craze for collecting as many cartes de visite as possible. Kind of like friending as many people as possible on Facebook.

The German American Collection, Cabinet Cards and CDVs

Here's the story on this collection. I bought it from an online dealer from Florida. He had picked up a large group of photos, albums, and ephemera from an estate, sold of a number of images, separately, and then took what was left and put together some lots for sale. I tried to buy a number of these groupings, and this was the only one I was able to get. There are some really nice photos, some dull ones, and some that are just plain bad. Because I think context is important, I'll eventually put all of them on line, but because so much of it is missing from the collection, I'll be putting them up intermittently, rather than all at once. Because I have some photos taken in Germany I've decided to label them all The German American Collection. Not a lot of labeling on these ones. The old man has a studio mark, "L. Rogers, PHOTOGRAPHER, TARRYTOWN, N.Y." Written, "Pops mothers father-Lewis" The young boy, "Seeley, 292 Main Street, Po'keepsie, N.Y." and written, "Katie Mortimer" And no, that's not a mistake, he's identified as Katie.

A Carte de Visite Album 4

Done! I manged to get every image from this album scanned into the computer without damaging a thing. Only one of the images has an exposed back that also has information on it. Printed on the back of the third single image of a woman, "Bogardus, Photographer, 363 Broadway Cor. Franklin St." There's more, very likely a Scranton address, but I'd have to take the cdv out of the page and I don't want to risk any damage. There are three non photographic bits of ephemera in the album. In the nineteenth century women routinely died in childbirth and the child mortality rate was around 30%. People had a tendency to be very sentimental about women and small children, and it shows in the pictures that the owner of this album chose to put in her album, and while I don't know for sure, I think that touch points to a woman owner. Perhaps she had lost a child. To see this album in order, navigate back to part one and go through the posts in order.

A Carte de Visite Album 3

Rather than taking a break and posting something from another source, just for a bit of variety, I think I'm going to go straight through and put this album up in four contiguous posts. As usual, if more than one photo is on a page, I'll put up the whole page to show position and then the individual image. I've also put up one of the damaged pages. Note that the back of one of the cards is visible, which gives an idea of how much of the background is lost when the carte de visite is inserted into the page. The first image of the bearded man, on the back of the card, "Schurch's PHOTOGRAPHIC STUDIO, Cor. Penn Avenue and Spruce Street, SCRANTON, PENNA." The man with the mustache, bow tie and the noticeable stains on the print, "E. P. Kellogg, Photographer, 279 MAIN STREET, HARTFORD, CONN."

A Carte de Visite Album 2

Continuing with the carte de visite album. Most of these either are in the album, back to back or have no studio identification. The two children with the hand colored sashes, "Coatsworth, Photographer, Opposite Wyoming House, Scranton." That's Scranton, Pennsylvania in the Wyoming river valley. And the final child, "R. D. PALMER, PHOTOGRAPHER And Portrait Painter, Huron Street, East of Cook's Hotel, Ann Arbor, Mich." In the first post from this album, I speculated that this family might have moved from Scranton to Sioux City, Iowa, but another explanation is an extended family with branches here and there around the country. Or at least the states that had been admitted by the end of the civil war. Click on the woman with the braids. Didi she make a necklace from her hair.

A Carte de Visite Album 1

This is one of the first big pieces in the old photo collection, given as a present by a relative, even though she agreed with the rest of my family that it was very weird that I was obsessed with collecting stuff. I'm not yet sure how I'm going to space this one out. There aren't that many photos left in the album. Many of the pictures have been torn out, the pages and album spine are very delicate, and I'm somewhat concerned that I might damage it when I put it on the scanner. It's hard to see, but there is a price of $15 on the first full page of the album. A bargain by today's standards.

As I've written in some of my earlier carte de visite posts, the CDV and the larger cabinet card were early attempts to come up with standard format for photographs. Printed and then mounted on same size card stock, they could be carried in card cases, or mounted in blank albums. In this particular album there is a slot in each page that allows for two CDVs, per page, to be slid in, back to back. While the photos could have been taken out and scanned separately, I decided not to risk any more damage to the album pages and left them in for scanning. The results, as can be seen, are a bit crooked.

Because some of the CDVs have been removed, the backs of some of the cards have been exposed. The photographers mark on the back of the woman holding the baby reads, "GEO. B. CHASE PHOTOGRAPHER, Scranton, Pa." The first shot of the child in a dress, "FRANK JEWELL PHOTOGRAPHER, Chase's Gallery. SCRANTON, PA." It seems that George Chase either took a partner or was successful enough to hire employees. It looks like this family moved, since the photos of the final two children each have "J. HAMILTON, PHOTOGRAPHER, FOURTH STREET, SIOUX CITY-IOWA" stamped on the back.

There was a strange custom in the nineteenth century of raising young boys as girls for the first four or five years of their lives. Note that the two pictures of the child wearing a dress look to be the same child, and that child is male.