Dentists I Have Not Known: Dr. Julian Gartrell, Brookeville, Maryland

Julian D. Gartrell was yet another dentist who graduated from the University of Maryland Dental Department in 1888, along with five others whose Baltimore cabinet card portraits I acquired earlier this year.

Born in Missouri on 1 April 1860, he grew up in the hamlet ofBrookevilleand the town of Olney, Montgomery County, Maryland, where his father, Rufus Worthington Gartrell (1824-1898), was a merchant and postmaster. Although not a distinguished family, their roots in Montgomery County went at least as far back as the American Revolution.

Rufus appears to have been the only one of five siblings who married and had children. Julian was one of three siblings, and all remained single.

In 1889 Gartrell joined the DC dental practice of C. E. Kennedy at 1426 New York Avenue, NW (Washington DC Evening Star, 23 May 1889).

Gartrell’s interest was oral prophylaxis, and he became a lecturer on this subject at the George Washington University School of Dentistry (GWU Bulletin March 1910).

His mother Caroline (Robinson) Gartrell, and his sisters Hallie May and Laura, kept house for him at 3025 15th St., NW.

Dr. Gartrell died 28 March 1943 in Washington, DC. His funeral was held at All Souls Episcopal Church, just a few blocks from his DC home.

He is buried, along with his parents and sisters Hallie and Laura, at Saint Johns Episcopal Church, Olney, Montgomery County, Md, the church his ancestor Caleb Gartrell helped to found in 1842.

John Philip Blessing (1835-1911) and son-in-law Henry Fenge were partners at 214 N. Charles Street in Baltimore from 1887 to 1904, a timeline that fits my tentative dating of this portrait to 1888 (Ross Kelbaugh, Directory of Maryland Photographers 1839-1900).

As with many of the other portraits of Maryland doctors and dentists in my collection, the operator chose a vignetted bust for Gartrell’s portrait, in which the background is burned out to create a soft, floating effect.

I am grateful to descendant and family historian William Gartrell, who has posted a Gartrell family tree based on notes made by Hallie and Laura Gartrell and  The Gartrell/Gatrell Ancestry of Colonial Marylandby Randall A. Haines.

“The gospel of work”: Dr. Alexander Douglas McConachie

I’ve so far documented nine cabinet card photographs of dentists and physicians who studied and/or practiced in Baltimore.

Alexander Douglas McConachie (1864-1951)  number ten, is the only one not from the United States.

Born in Woodstock, Oxford, Ontario, Canada to Scots immigrants William and Elspeth (Shand) McConachie, Alexander came to Baltimore to study dental surgery and medicine in 1886.

He was part of the University of Maryland Department of Dental Surgery graduating class of 1888, along with Leonidas Wilson Davis and Frank Ryland Steel.

Dr. McConachie went on to study medicine at the University of Maryland and earned an MD there in 1890. He did post-graduate work at Johns Hopkins, and then pursued his medical studies in Europe.

During World War I, Dr. McConachie served in the Army Medical Corps in Orleans, France.

He was president of the Medical Alumni Association of the University of Maryland for 1923-1924, and a professor on the faculty of the Maryland Medical College.

McConachie settled in Baltimore and in 1898 married into an old Cecil County clan. His wife, Mollie Manly Thomas Drennen, through the Hylands traced her Elkton roots back the 18th century.

According to a Daughters of the American Revolution Lineage Book, Mrs. McConachie was descended through her mother, Ann Elizabeth Worrall Manly, from a Lt. John Hyland, born in Kent County, Maryland, in 1746.

After his marriage, Dr, McConachie and his wife settled on Charles Street, in Baltimore, where they lived for the rest of their lives. McConachie, who specialized in disorders of the ear, nose and throat, had his practice at the same address for 50 years.

Dr. McConachie  took his Presbyterian Protestantism seriously. When asked for his definition of success, he told the authors of Men of Mark of Maryland:

“Being content and happy in doing my daily duty as it arises, I never feel the sting of failure, but if I have failed (according to the judgment of others), I should say that I have not succeeded in applying assiduously my gospel, which is a gospel of work, and more work, by which we work out our salvation here and hereafter.”

Fortunately, his gospel did not stop him from enjoying life. An avid sportsman, he loved the new pastime of “motoring” and “hoped to fly.” He liked movies and the theater, and read widely.

The portrait of the young doctor here was taken at the studio of William Ashman, probably as a graduation remembrance in the late 1880s. The National Library of Medicine’s later  portrait of Dr. McConachie shows a handsome man in his confident prime.

He and his wife are buried with his wife’s people in Elkton Cemetery, Cecil County.

The Other Buffham Brother: John Hardiman Buffham

Vintage photograph collectors may have heard of English-born George Richard Buffham (1846-1915), official photographer to the US Naval Academy at Annapolis.

Buffham also had a studio in Baltimore, Maryland, which he ran under the name Buffham Brothers.

This is the other Buffham of Buffham Brothers: John Hardiman Buffham (1855-1940). Like George, John Buffham immigrated to the US from England in the 1870s and settled in Baltimore with his wife, Jessie, and mother, Mary Ann Johnson Buffham.

George and John first appear in the US census records in Baltimore in 1880 as “picture dealers.” They might have been exposed to the business through their father, George Richard Buffham, Sr., who had been a London carver and gilder–probably of frames.

George was apprenticed to a London “spectacle-maker,” and the training in grinding glass lenses must have served as a good background for an understanding of photography.

George Buffham moved to Annapolis and gained the appointment at the Naval Academy sometime between 1890 and 1900. He sold his studio, located at 48 Maryland Avenue, near Prince George Street,  in 1912.

Some of his most famous photos are studio portraits of future admirals Chester W. Nimitz,  Harold Rainsford  Stark and Wat Tyler Cluverius as  US Naval Academy cadets.

Buffham photographed many officers, Academy athletic teams, graduating class groups, as well as members of the Maryland General Assembly, and outdoor scenes of Annapolis and the Academy. The Maryland State Archives and the Library of Congress each hold small collections of his photographs.

While George focused on photography, John Hardiman Buffham gravitated toward business, eventually working as a representative of Baltimore’s Resinol Company. The company made cremes and soaps developed by Dr. Merville Hamilton Carter in his private practice. Buffham, who divided his time between Baltimore and England, became the company’s representative in London.

John died in London in 1940, leaving an estate of nearly £6,000 to his two daughters, Edith Mary (Buffham) Varney and Jessie Mabel (Buffham) Curry.

While George and John both kept a substantial presence in England, a third brother, carpenter Thomas Henry Buffham (1852-1921) settled in Port Chester, Westchester County, New York, for good. His descendants became solidly American, while John’s remained in England.

This cabinet card photograph lists the studio’s address at 116 South Broadway, Baltimore, a location that Kelbaugh’s Directory of Maryland Photographers says Buffham occupied between 1880 and 1889.

George Buffham’s bust portrait of John takes full advantage of John’s dark good looks, penetrating eyes, strikingly smooth, pale complexion and high forehead. Leaning dramatically toward the camera, John’s confident gaze compels the viewer to acknowledge and admire him.

John F. Wiley, Printer: “In his job, very skillful”

Official printer for the State of Maryland, member of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Board of Directors and the Maryland House of Delegates . . . These are just a few of the accomplishments that made John Francis Wiley (1822-1877) a valued, if forgotten, citizen of Baltimore.

Despite a rather long obituary in the Baltimore Sun, John Wiley’s origins are obscure. He was born in Baltimore, apprenticed to the Philadelphia Ledger as a printer’s devil in 1834, became foreman of that paper’s job printing operations, then returned to Baltimore to fill the same position for the Sun in 1852, later going into business on his own account.

In the mid-1870s he was appointed State Printer, in charge of producing all of Maryland state government’s official publications.  He was twice elected to the Maryland House of Delegates for Baltimore, but died before he could serve his second term.

According to his memorialists, Wiley was a thoughtful and well-read man, as well as a successful printer and public servant. He self-published a travel narrative documenting his observations on his and his wife’s one trip abroad.

Printed privately, his Letters from Europe in the year 1869 is so obscure that it has not been cataloged. The Maryland Historical Society’s H. Furlong Baldwin Library owns a copy, and one copy has surfaced on the web for sale by a purveyor of rare books.

When Wiley died at the age of 55, multiple newspapers published obituaries honoring his enterprise and character. The New York Herald called him “a purely self-made man” (New York Herald, 19 November 1877).

The Baltimore Sun‘s obituary was, naturally, the longest. The anonymous writer remembered him thus:

“He was a ready writer, and though he only made occasional efforts with the pen his writings from time to time displayed culture and observation. He had many warm personal friends. As a businessman he was prompt and intelligent, and in his job, very skillful” (Baltimore Sun, 21 November 1877).

He and his wife, Sally Forman Wiley, had no children. After his death, Mrs. Wiley moved to Philadelphia to live with her brother, William Wiley Forman, his wife Mary, and their daughters, Lillie, Sarah Wiley Forman and Elizabeth Forman.

There is a sad coda to his life story.

Because his wife made no will before her  death in 1897, her brother attempted to have her dying words accepted in lieu of a written statement of intentions. “Rheumatism,” said William Wiley’s attorney, “had affected . . . her hands to such an extent that she was able to write only with great pain and labor.”

But “everything is to go to Willie,” she had said, “Mary, don’t you or the children worry about anything. I want Willie–brother Willie–to have everything” (Pennsylvania State Reports, v. 187, p. 82 ff).

The Pennsylvania courts declined to recognize Mrs. Wiley’s words as a will, and in 1898, the unnamed opponents of William Forman’s case successfully defended against his appeal.

The card mount of this carte de visite portrait bears the blind emboss mark of daguerreotypist and photographer Jesse Harrison Whitehurst (1823-1875). According to Maryland photography historian Ross Kelbaugh, Whitehurst’s photographic studio was at 123 Baltimore Street from 1860 to 1864. Photographs taken between 1864 and 1866 were taxed by means of a  revenue stamp on the reverse. Since this carte lacks a revenue stamp, Wiley’s portrait might might well have been taken between 1860 and 1864.

Whitehurst was one of the most successful of the early daguerreans and photographers, operating galleries in multiple cities, including Washington, DC and New York.  According to what is known of him, he took up the daguerreotypy almost as soon as it was introduced in the United States, traveling from Virginia to New York to study the new technology.

“Mr. Whitehurst,” said his brief obituary in the journal Photographic Mosaics, “was celebrated for securing sittings from distinguished characters, of which he was supposed to have had the largest collection of negatives in this or any other country.”

Whitehurst’s highly-prized portraits of the famous include General J. E. B. Stuart, General Sam Houston, and the actor Edwin Booth.

Whitehurst daguerreotypes and photographs can be found in the collections of noted archives, historical societies and museums, including the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Library of Congress.

John Francis Wiley is buried in Green Mount Cemetery, Baltimore, Maryland.

First National Bank, Cumberland by T. L. Darnell

Like a less attractive relation, the old First National Bank building, located at Baltimore and George streets in Cumberland, pictured here, is often overlooked in favor of its famous, Bruce Price-designed neighbor–the Second National Bank building at Baltimore and Liberty streets.

Considerable confusion exists because of the history of the reorganization of various banks in Cumberland over the centuries. I’m not  going to attempt to reconstruct this history here beyond its direct relevance to the two buildings.

These dates are based on the 1970s Allegany County Historic Site Inventory for the Maryland Historic Trust and Allegany County, A Pictorial History, by Lee G. Schwartz, Albert L. Feldstein and Joan H. Baldwin (Donning: Virginia Beach, Va., 1980):

• The Cumberland Bank of Allegany was founded in 1812 and chartered as the First National Bank of Cumberland in 1864. It first located at Baltimore and George in 1858 (Pictorial, 91).

• Pictured here, the First National Bank building  at Baltimore and George was built ca. 1889-1890 from a design by a forgotten architect. Although blurred, the date on this cabinet card photograph appears to be 1889. In 1912, the bank’s facade was either altered beyond recognition or a new building, which still exists, was built upon the same location. Further evidence of our building’s date of construction is the absence in this photo of the old YMCA building to its right, which is clearly visible in later photographs. According to Schwartz, et. al., the old YMCA building was built about 1893 as a three-story structure; two more stories were added in 1910 (Pictorial, 40). An article focusing on changes in this block dates the old YMCA building to 1894. I think today the newer bank building at Baltimore and George is occupied by the First Peoples Community Federal Credit Union.

• Bruce Price designed the more ornate and famous Second National Bank building at Baltimore and Liberty. According to Schwartz, et. al., the Second National Bank of Cumberland was chartered in 1865 and moved to Baltimore and Liberty in 1868 (Pictorial, 24). Some sources give 1888 as the Price building’s origin; others ca. 1893. A historic marker on this building confusingly identifies it as the First National Bank, because in 1963 Second National merged with First National to become First National Bank and Trust Company. This  building exhibits the distinctive “round-arched Romanesque style” and “steep-gabled wall dormer” described in its survey for the Historic Site Inventory  of Allegany County. The Price building at Baltimore and Liberty, on the pedestrian mall, is now occupied by Susquehanna Bank (some sites on the web still say Farmers and Merchants Bank).

Now back to our photograph. During this period, according to Ross Kelbaugh’s Directory of Maryland Photographers,  the studio of Thomas L. Darnell (1825-1908) was located at 96 Baltimore Street in Cumberland, and I’ve found other Darnell cabinet cards with the location 106 Baltimore Street.

Kelbaugh dates cards that include “and Son” to 1880-1901, but this card, dated 1889, doesn’t fit that schema. We know the photograph depicts a building ca. 1889-1893, so more work on Darnell’s business history remains to be done.

Darnell includes a few figures to add life and scale to the scene, which captured the building’s facade with the sun full upon it. Only slight shadows in casement corners pick out the lines of the high, handsome, leaded double-height windows.

Funderburk by Ellerbrock

This confident young man, identified on the reverse of this photograph as Dr. Ernest Funderburk, DDS, sat for his portrait at the Baltimore studio of Herman Ellerbrock (b. abt. 1869, Maryland).

Ellerbrock, son of German-born baker August Ellerbrock, appears listed as a photographer in Baltimore business directories of circa 1890, with the address 215 N. Patterson Park Avenue. A 1904 Baltimore SUN advertisement gives his business address as 109 West Lexington Street, the nearly unreadable address at bottom right.

Difficult to make out below the name “Ellerbrock” in the lower right-hand corner are the words “formerly with Ashman.” This tells me Ellerbrock established his bona fides as an independent “operator” by referencing his association with his former employer, the well-known Baltimore  studio photographer William Ashman.

Ellerbrock’s young subject may have been James Ernest Funderburk (1885-1972), who graduated from the University of Maryland Dental Department in 1908 (today’s UMD School of Dentistry).

Born in Cheraw, Chesterfield County, South Carolina to farmer  James Thomas Funderburk (1847-1934) and Mary Welsh or Welch (1852-1907), J. Ernest Funderburk, as he is sometimes identified, did post-graduate work in oral surgery and anesthesiology before beginning private practice.

He returned home to Chesterfield County, South Carolina to practice dental surgery, and married Mary Eliza Sellers. After her death, he married Effie Wall, and between his two wives, he had ten children, eight of whom survived to adulthood.

An elder and deacon of the First Presbyterian Church of Cheraw, South Carolina, he is buried in Old St. Davids Episcopal Church Cemetery, Cheraw.

His youngest son, Ervin W. Funderburk, followed him into the dental profession and may still be practicing in Cheraw.

According to the research of an anonymous family historian and of Shirley Burks Wells, Dr. Funderburk’s grandfather, also named James, was born in South Carolina in 1809, and the family’s roots in Chesterfield County and Lancaster County, South Carolina, trace back to the pre-Revolutionary era.

A large memorial erected in the cemetery of Spring Hill Baptist Church in Lancaster County traces the family’s roots back to German settler Hans Devauld Funderburk (1724-1818).

Two aspects of this portrait mark it as transitional. While Dr. Funderburk leans against a bit of papier mache balustrade, a typical 1880s studio prop, the card mount is oversized and has a fine texture meant to mimic linen. Ellerbrock chose an understated blind embossed advertising mark, all more typical of early 1900s studio practice.

Leo J. Beachy: A Southwest View of the Cove, Md.

Even without his name or the words “Mt. Nebo Studio” on the back, his distinctive handwriting marks this real photo postcard as the work of  Leo J. Beachy (1874-1927).

Following the wisdom of  RPPC  dating experts, “A Southwest View of the Cove, Md., From the Oakland State Road,” with its divided back and bordered CYKO stamp box, probably dates from ca. 1905.

Beachy seems never to have tired of the endlessly unfolding views from the State Road above the rolling farmland known as “the Cove,” and its vistas continue to be popular today.

Pinpointing the exact vantage point  near Oakland will have to wait for someone intimately familiar with this stretch of  US 219, aka Garrett Highway.

During the period Beachy took this photograph, 219 was still known as the State Road. South of Oakland, the road took a route different from its later incarnation: it snaked out of Oakland via 3rd Street, became Underwood Road, then swung east up Monte Vista Road.

For more about Beachy’s photography, life and the dramatic story of how his niece, Maxine Beachy Broadwater, rescued a portion of his almost forgotten work, see my earlier posts on Leo J. Beachy.

Then visit the online galleries of Beachy’s photos at the Garrett County Historical Society, where you can purchase prints of any of over 2,800 of his images. In them one glimpses the great and reverent affection Beachy  felt for the land and the people around him.

Five Medical Sons of the Southland

This cabinet card photograph by Blessing & Co. (John P. Blessing and Henry Fenge)  is autographed by five young men who all turned out to be graduates of the Baltimore College of Physicians and Surgeons, class of 1888.

Perhaps they had their portrait taken as a parting remembrance of their time together.
All five are mentioned in a Baltimore Sun article of 16 March 1888 about the school’s commencement ceremonies at Ford’s Opera House in Baltimore: William Rish Lowman from South Carolina; Harris Miller Branham and Peyton H. Keaton from Georgia. George E. Weber and W. W. Brown are mentioned as special prize-winners in the “graded course,” but their state of origin isn’t given.

For graduating second in his graduating class, Harris Miller Branham (1862-1938) was awarded the Brown Memorial Prize and a year’s residency at Baltimore City Hospital (Peabody College Alumni Directory).

He had come to Baltimore to study medicine after graduating from Peabody College in Nashville, Tennessee and teaching for several years.

His parents were Eatonton, Georgia natives Mary Helen Matthews and  Isham Harris Branham (1848-1906), a wealthy Georgia merchant and attorney who attended Emory College in Oxford, Georgia, and  served in the Confederate armed forces during the Civil War.

Young Harris Branham grew up in Fort Valley, Houston County, Georgia, but when he settled down to practice medicine, it was in Brunswick, in Glynn County, Georgia. He and his wife Daisy Tison Branham, are buried in Palmetto Cemetery, Glynn County.

Branham’s identification of the signs of a medical phenomenon called an  “arteriovenous fistula” earned him an entry in the German version of Wikipedia. His observation was dubbed “Branham’s Sign” in his honor;  the story of his medical “eponym” is recounted in a 1985 article in The Annals of Thoracic Surgery by Will C. Sealy.

Read a 1906 biographical sketch of Dr. Branham and family in Georgia: Comprising Sketches of Counties, Towns, Institutions and Persons.

William Rish Lowman was awarded the Erich Prize for finishing third  in his graduating medical class.

Born 3 December 1866 in Lexington County, South Carolina, to Dr. Jacob Walter Lowman (1837-1905) and Lodusky (Rish) Lowman (1839-1929), William was descended, through his mother’s kin, from Jacob Long, who served in Water’s Regiment of South Carolina during the American Revolution.

Like Branham’s father, Lowman’s father served the Confederacy in the war between the states, but whether as a doctor or as a soldier is not clear.

Dr. Jacob Lowman studied medicine at the University of Georgia. After the war, he returned to his country practice. A respected and influential citizen, he was elected to the South Carolina state legislature for Lexington County.

According to family and local history researcher Jim Dugan, William Rish Lowman was a pharmacist as well as a physician, and the proprietor of Lowman Drug Store in Orangeburg, South Carolina.

Dr. Lowman served as a board member and trustee of  Orangeburg’s South Carolina State University. A men’s dormitory, Lowman Hall, was named for him in 1917. The building, which is on the National Register of Historic Places and part of the South Carolina State College Historic District, was completely rehabbed and reopened in 2010 as University administrative offices.

William, his wife Elvira (Izlar) Lowman, and his parents are buried in Sunnyside Cemetery, Orangeburg.

Dr. Peyton Howard Keaton (1863-1927) of Dougherty County, Georgia, was the son of wealthy plantation-owner Benjamin Washington Keaton (b. abt. 1825).

B. W. Keaton had inherited a large portion of land in what became Dougherty County from his father, B. O. Keaton, who died leaving something like 21,000 acres, including dwellings, farm equipment, farm animals, and probably hundreds of slaves. The land appears to have been divided among several sons, including Benjamin W. Keaton.

After the death of B. W. Keaton sometime between 1865 and 1870, Peyton’s mother, Laura Henington or Hemington  Keaton, married a prosperous merchant of Damascus, Early County, Georgia, and Peyton grew up in the house of his stepfather, Thomas Hightower.

Peyton and his friend W. R. Lowman continued their medical studies together at the New York Post-Graduate Medical School and Hospital, and Keaton named one of his sons, Lowman Keaton, after his friend.

Keaton died of an apparent accidental overdose of chloroform on 7 December 1927, possibly in Leon County, Florida; records of the location conflict. He is buried in Damascus Cemetery, Old Damascus, Early Co., Georgia.

By all accounts, Dr. Keaton died a wealthy man: Owner of 5,000 acres of land, part-owner of  dry goods store in Blakely, Georgia and a meat market in Damascus, and vice-president of a local bank.

W. W. Brown and George E. Weber present more difficult problems, as their states of origin are not given.

W. W. Brown could have been Dr. William Wiley Brown of Limestone County, Texas, born in Texas to Mississippi transplants Wiley Pickens Brown (1837-1918) and Mary “Molly” Z. (Stephens) Brown (1843-1913).

Cathy McCormick has documented the life of Wiley P. Brown’s family in Groesbeck, Limestone County, Texas, where William Wiley Brown married May Procter (1875-1938) and settled down to practice medicine. Dr. Brown died in an auto accident in 1932 and is buried in Faulkenberry Cemetery, Groesbeck, Limestone Co., Texas, along with William’s parents.

Dr. Brown’s brother, Frank F. Brown, DDS, studied dentisty at the Baltimore College of Dental Surgery.

According to A History of Texas and Texans, Volume Four, Wiley P. Brown was born in Tallahachie County, Mississippi and came to Limestone County in 1849 with his parents, whose roots were in South Carolina.

Dr. Brown shared with Keaton and Lowman the history of a father who served in the Confederate army. Capt. Wiley P. Brown rode with the 20th Texas Cavalry in Arkansas and Indian Territory during the Civil War.

G. E. Weber could have been George Ernest Peter Webber (1872-1930), a Kentucky-born physician who grew up in Missouri, and settled in Morland, Graham County, Kansas with his wife Cora Mather. They are buried in Morland City Cemetery, Graham County, Kansas.

Did they ever see each other again after they settled down? State medical associations routinely appointed delegates to attend the annual conferences of other state medical associations, so it is possible that they encountered each other at such gatherings.

However life separated them later, their group photograph captures a moment when these confident young southern doctors, graduating at the top of their class, formed an affectionate confederacy of five.

With Compliments of D. R. Stiltz & Co.

When one thinks of vintage views of Baltimore, stereographs are the form that comes first to mind.

Daniel Reed Stiltz (1837-1903) may have sold photographs to stereoview publishers–most are anonymous–but he specialized, at least while in Baltimore, in carte de visite-sized views of churches and important buildings.

This 1864 photograph of  St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Franklin Square shows the church still under construction.

Originally designed by Niernsee and Neilson and dedicated in 1853, the church was not finished for 15 years when the board brought in  J. W. Priest.

Priest, a proponent of the Ecclesiological Society’s belief that modern church design should reflect those of medieval English churches, added the small crenelated tower.

The Maryland Historical Society has several of Stiltz’s cartes available for viewing on line, including the old Baltimore court-house at Calvert and Lexington, the Front Street Theater.

St. Luke’s is now on the National Register of Historic Places.

Several photographs of the church, as well as details about the history of the design and building of St. Luke’s, are visible via Google Books in The Gothic Revival and American Church Architecture (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1968), by Phoebe B. Stanton.

Born in Baltimore, according to Maryland photography historian Ross Kelbaugh Daniel Reed Stiltz trained in daguerreotypy under Jesse Whitehurst.

During the Civil War, Stiltz, who served as a private in Company H of Purnell’s Legion, Maryland Infantry, worked as an army photographer (Lycoming County Genealogical Society).

He married Mary Elizabeth Marshall in 1861, and by 1870, they had settled in Williamsport, Lycoming County, Pennsylvania, where he continued to operate a studio on 4th Street, and then founded a business called the National Copying Company.

He and Mary, who belonged to Williamsport’s beautiful and historic Christ Episcopal Church, had four children, Helen, Mary (Stiltz) Sergeant, Chester, Stanley (who lived only two years), and civil engineer Daniel Dorey Stiltz (1876-1913). Daniel Stiltz Sr. died on 15 June 1903, and is buried in Wildwood Cemetery, Williamsport, along with his wife, their daughter Helen, and their sons Daniel, Stanley and Chester.

Thanks to the Lycoming County Genealogical Society  for their help with documentation of Daniel Reed Stiltz’s career and with finding his family’s graves in Wildwood Cemetery.

Face of a Lonaconing Fleming?

Since writing my previous posts about the McAlpine family of Lonaconing, Maryland, I was able to borrow a copy of The Lonaconing Legacy: Its Cornish and Scottish Sons and Daughters, by Thomas Witwer Richards and Sally Miller Atkinson.

Primarily a genealogy of the authors’ families, the book, published in 2000, offers fascinating glimpses of what life was like for immigrant coal mining families, especially the tight-knit clan of related Peebles, Richards, Loves and McAlpines who lived and worked in Lonaconing during its coal-mining heyday.

Janet Douglas Peebles (1814-1892), widow of Thomas Peebles Sr. (1812-1859), had a brother who came to Lonaconing in 1851. John Douglas “became mine boss with the George’s Creek Coal and Iron Company in 1853,” and then was promoted to Superintendent in 1863 (Legacy, 130).

“Douglas relied upon his Peebles, McAlpine, and Love kinsmen to form the backbone of the company’s work force, and the better jobs were available to them. . . . Family members had job opportunities even in the slowest of times” (Legacy, 130).

Close ties with company management may have made these workers less amenable to labor organizing, minimizing strikes and unrest.

Extended family provided personal support as well, such as living quarters for relations and helping widowed miners with child care.

But besides filling in some of the detail about life in Lonaconing during its coal mining height, the book  includes reproductions of rarely-seen early photographs of family members.

Several photographs of Fleming sisters, especially portraits of Mary Fleming Peebles (1839-1915) wife of Thomas Peebles, Jr. (1836-1911),  in middle age, bear resemblance to the unidentified photograph of the middle-aged woman in the portrait above.

But is the timing right?

According to Kelbaugh’s Directory of Maryland Photographers 1839-1900, Cumberland photographer Thomas L. Darnell used the advertising mark “Darnell and Son” from 1880 to 1901. This doesn’t help us narrow down the photo’s date, but her clothing might.

Her hair still dark and lustrous, the woman in this cabinet card photograph appears to be in her late 30s or 40s. Her dress’ high collar with linen band, and tight, button-decorated bodice reflect 1880s fashion (see Joan Severa, Dressed for the Photographer: Ordinary Americans and Fashion, 1840-1900).

So, if we guess at an 1880s date for this portrait, the subject might have been born in the 1840s. 

Elizabeth Fleming (1848-1909) was born in Denny, Stirlingshire, Scotland. Richards and Atkinson relate that Elizabeth met her future husband, John McAlpine (1845-1914), while sojourning in Lonaconing with her elder sister, Mary Fleming Peebles.

Elizabeth Fleming McAlpine would have been in her late 30s or early 40s at the time of this portrait, and I am sorely tempted to conjecture that she is the subject.

Sally Miller Atkinson, a descendant of this group of related families who has done extensive research on her ancestors,  has looked at the photo, however, and asserts that she does not recognize the woman.

So, without further visual evidence, the mystery persists.