Another Leaf on the Pryor Tree: James Walter Pryor, Market Master of Hagerstown

After researching the Pryor family of Washington and Frederick counties for a playful Pryor group portrait awhile ago, I was primed to respond when I saw this cabinet card portrait come up for sale on an internet auction site.

An inscription on the back in period ink identifies the sitter as “Mr. J. Walter Pryor, Wolfsville, Fred. Co., Md., Oct. 17th, ’95”.  Based on what I have learned about the Pryors, I believe this young man was James Walter Pryor (1874-1965) the son of Frederick County farmers Peter Columbus Pryor (1853-1925) and Catherine Sensenbaugh (1851-1929).

Both James Walter Pryor and the Pryor boys in my other card photograph trace their ancestors to “Reds” Elliot (1760-ca. 1810-1820) and common-law wife Hannah Prior/Pryor (1760-1839). Both are believed by family history researchers to have emigrated from the British Isles and to have had 11 children together.

Known as J. Walter Pryor, perhaps to distinguish himself from cousin James Albert Pryor (1872-1919), our subject in 1902 married Olive Idella Wolfe, daughter of  a neighboring Wolfsville, Frederick County farmer and carpenter Jonathan N. Wolfe (1843-1918) and Amanda Blickenstaff (1844-1895).

The couple settled in Hagerstown, where J. Walter followed a variety of occupations. He worked as a bleacher in a knitting mill, and as a foreman for the Maryland Pressed Steel Company. In his later years he worked as a carpenter and a painting contractor.  He and Olive raised their seven children first in a brick duplex at 202 Cannon Avenue and later in a wood-frame house on North Mulberry Street.

It wasn’t until 1946 that he was appointed, by a narrow margin, master of the Hagerstown City Market, a position he held until  1954. In the announcement of his retirement at the age of 80, the Hagerstown Morning Herald said that he “was considered by many the best market master the city had ever had, “doubling the number of rented market stalls” and carrying out much-needed repairs and refurbishment to the building and fixtures (Hagerstown Morning Herald, 31 December 1954, p. 12).

Those who are familiar with Hagerstown history know that the City Market House, since 1928 located at 25 W. Church Street,  has been a center economic and social life in the county for over two hundred years, surviving the rise of supermarkets and international food distribution.

J. Walter sat for this bust portrait at the studio of Bascom W. T. Phreaner (1845-1932), who operated a photographic gallery in Hagerstown from 1866 to 1901. Phreaner used a traditional burned-out background to highlight the simple dignity of the young man’s clear-eyed gaze. Pryor chose a 5″x7″ cream card mount with a subtle pebbled texture.

James Walter Pryor and Olive Idella Wolfe Pryor are buried at Rose Hill Cemetery, Hagerstown. Peter Columbus Pryor and Catherine Sensenbaugh Pryor are buried in the cemetery adjoining St. Mark’s Lutheran Church, Wolfsville.

Thanks to the many family history researchers and volunteers who have documented the Pryors of Hagertown and Frederick County.

A Manor Brethren Church Album: Rev. David Long

Attempted album rescues inspire both excitement and anguish, satisfaction and sadness.

All these emotions and more permeate my thoughts about an old, red velvet-covered album I snatched back from online auction oblivion in 2012.

But this is going about the story backwards. It began with the appearance on ebay of a cabinet card photograph of Nora Welty as a child. Having acquired a portrait of the same person as a young woman more than a year before, I was eager to win the auction, and did so.

I had already done some family history research on Nora (Welty) Barnheisel (1878-1951), daughter of Fairplay, Md. cabinetmaker  David Welty (1832-1916) and Laura A. (Shafer) Welty (1840-1917), so when I noticed a number of other identified Hagerstown-area vintage card photographs up for auction, I quickly realized that the individuals were all part of the same group of linked families from Washington County, whose surnames include Long, Shafer, Coffman, Slifer, Fahrney, Reichard and Middlekauff.

The common thread was their connection to  Manor Church of the Brethren just south of Hagerstown.

According to Jerry Henry’s The History of the Church of the Brethren in Maryland (Elgin, Illinois: Brethren Publishing House, 1936), a group of German Baptists began meeting for services in a structure, possibly a log school house, around 1790, led by Elders David Long and his brother-in-lawn Daniel Reichard. This community eventually became known as the Manor congregation.

Manor Church of the Brethren, located off the Sharpsburg Pike between Hagerstown and Antietam battlefield, still exists today. In its large adjoining cemetery rest many of Nora Welty’s ancestors and relations.

The anguish of this album for me is that I could not afford to save all the photographs that were removed and auctioned off. Of the 54 slots that, carefully labeled in pencil, appear to have contained photographs, I was only able to save 18 plus two copies of a memorial card for Alexander Shafer.

When the empty album came up for sale, I bought it as well. All 18 photographs are now back in their proper places and they and the album will eventually find a home in a public institution in Washington County.

But whose album was it? The  identifications below the photographs provide clues. Pride of place went to “Uncle David Long my mother’s Brother” and “Aunt Mary Reichard Long,” his wife.

The owner of the album was a niece of David Long (1820-1897) and Mary (Reichard) Long. A few pages further into the album, we see “sister Laura Shafer Welty” (1840-1917), wife of David Welty (1832-1916), Nora Welty’s father, and then “my father Alexander Shafer” (1809-1893). Alexander Shafer’s second wife was Catherine Long (1818-1890), one of Rev. David Long’s siblings.

So the owner of the album was one of the four siblings of Laura A. (Shafer) Welty. Another photo is identified as “sister Annie Shafer” (1852-1904). Other siblings were Estella (Shafer) Coffman,  Clara Ellen (Shafer) Slifer, and Charles A. Shafer.

Alexander Shafer was married twice: Clara, Laura and Charles were his children by his first wife, Leah Sarah Eakle (1816-1848); Annie and and Estella were his children by his second wife, Catherine Long. My money is on Estella (Shafer) Coffman as the original owner of the album.

In documenting the people in this venerable, once-cherished album, I begin where the owner began–with Rev. David Long.

This later David Long (1820-1897) appears in Henry’s history of the Brethren in Maryland as a revered leader of the Manor congregation. Son of  wealthy Washington County farmer and miller Joseph Long (1792-1852) and Nancy Ann Rowland (1791-1865),  farmer David Long became an elder at age 25 and then a minister at age 30, presiding over the Manor church for 25 years.

Henry relates several anecdotes about David Long to convey his character, including that Long once bought and freed all the slaves at a slave sale.

Long is said to have delivered the sermon in the Mumma Brethren church the night before the great battle at Antietam in September 1862. This simple white-washed structure became a part of collective American memory as “the Dunker church.“

David and Mary Long had 12 children. Joseph, Walter, Orville and Victor became Brethren ministers; three daughters, Susan, Elizabeth and Catherine, married Brethren ministers: Susan married Eli Yourtee; Elizabeth married Emanuel David Kendig; Catherine married Seth F. Myers.  By my count, David and Mary Long had 48 grandchildren scattered throughout western Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Kansas, Missouri and California.

The A. L. Rogers studio operator who created this portrait of Rev. Long used the popular vignette style, which burns out the background of the sitter.

As I’ve written about in my blog Cardtography, Albert Long Rogers  (1853-1934) owned studios in Westminster and Baltimore, Maryland, and Carlisle, Pennsylvania, as well as  in Hagerstown.

The portrait, taken in Rogers’ Hagerstown location, depicts a full-bearded Rev. Long in his later years, showing many wrinkles, but with eyes still clear and intelligent. His clothing is simple and unadorned, reflecting the back-to-basics values of the Brethren.

Thanks to the work of many dedicated volunteers, I have been able to find 99 graves of Longs, Shafers, Weltys, Reichards, Slifers, Fahrneys, Boyds, Eakles and more, on findagrave.com. All 18 portraits I acquired have been posted to their memorials there.

The Hathi Trust and Google have made the entire digitized History of the Brethren Church in Maryland available on the web.

A “Genial and Courteous Demeanor”: Peter J. Adams of Hagerstown

With his well cared-for wool suit and his neatly trimmed white beard, Peter J. Adams appears the very picture of  affable respectability.

The operator  in Albert Long Rogers‘ Hagerstown studio chose the popular if conventional vignetted bust style to capture Adams’ amiable personality in this 1880s cabinet card photograph.

Peter J. Adams (1818-1889) never made the pages of the news; the Adams family of Hagerstown barely rates a brief mention in Thomas Williams’1,300-page History of Washington County, Maryland.

What we know of Adams comes mainly from his obituary, published in the Hagertown Herald and Torch Light on 3 October 1889.

A Lutheran and a Democrat, Adams served for 12 years as a deputy to the Clerk of the Circuit Court, “where he established a large acquaintance and made many friends.”

He was an early member of the Potomac Lodge of Odd Fellows and a long-time teacher in the Sunday School of St. John’s Lutheran Church, Hagerstown.

Beyond the fact that he was born near Mercersburg, Franklin County, Pennsylvania, little is available about his life or his ancestry.

By trade a carpenter, Adams is said to have settled in the Leitersburg area of Washington County with his parents around 1832; he married Elizabeth Butler about 1841, and with her had two children: printer and Hagerstown Daily News publisher John Underwood Adams (1841-1911) and Martha Florence Adams.

Corroborating information helped me make a confident identification: On the back of this cabinet card is written “Frisby Weaver’s uncle.”

The connection is through Elizabeth Butler, whose sister, Catherine Butler (1823-1887), married Leitersburg area blacksmith J. Henry Weaver (1811-1893), father of farmer Frisby M. Weaver (1845-1913).

Peter Adams’ son John surfaces in Washington County history as co-publisher of the Hagerstown Daily News, first with George H. Nock in 1873 and then with William S. Herbert (History of Washington County, Maryland, vol. 1).

According to John’s obituary, John U. Adams began his career as an apprentice at the Hagertown Mail. Aside from his vocation, Adams’ two other forays into public life were an appointment as Deputy Stamp Collector during Grover Cleveland’s administration, and a two-year stint as Magistrate.

John U. Adams’ daughter, Sarah I. Adams (1869-1963), was a widely liked and respected teacher and librarian in the Washington County schools.

Another daughter, Gertrude Adams (1875-1956), married well-known Hagerstown druggist Harry Robert Rudy Sr. (1873-1941) of the firm of Rudy & Meredith, whose drugstore was situated on the Hotel Hamilton Block in Hagerstown.

It is hard to pin down the period during which Rogers operated in Hagerstown. In its entry on photographer William B. King the History of Washington County says that Rogers’ Hagerstown studio was located at  48 W. Washington Street, and that King bought it from Rogers in 1887. But according to the Biographical Annals of Franklin County, Pennsylvania, volume 1, Rogers conducted a photography business in Hagerstown from 1887 to about 1890.

Whether taken before or after 1887, the photograph depicts Adams as an elderly man, so a mid- to late-1880s date for this cabinet card makes sense.

Thanks to the Washington County Free Library for providing John Underwood Adams’ obituary, and as always, to the many diligent and generous family history researchers and grave documenters of ancestry.com and findagrave.com.

Postscript: Jill Craig of the Western Maryland  Regional Library alerted me to Gertrude Adams Rudy’s painting of the Washington County Free Library book wagon.

Saving the Schwartzes

People who research family history take different stances regarding the buying and selling of orphaned family photographs. Some refuse to buy them on principle; some take even more militant stances, engaging in small acts of illicit resistance.

You can condemn these sales as unseemly, but the reality is that without the trade in vintage photographs, most orphaned family photos would end up in the trash after more valued possessions are sold in estate sales.

So, I rescue what I can afford to, make family trees for the families on ancestry.com, and post the photos to the trees and to other sites like findagrave.com. At least this way, family structures are preserved on the web, and descendants have some chance of discovering their ancestors’ images. Ultimately, most of what I collect will go to archives and historical groups in Maryland.

This month, I dug into my frayed pockets to rescue an identified collection of about 20 vintage photographs from the early 1900s. All the individuals lived in Baltimore and Catonsville, Maryland, and are related to German immigrant John G. Schwartz (1847-1924) and his wife Anna H. Schlerf (b. abt. 1858, Baltimore, Md.).

Surnames of identifications inked on these photos, in addition to Schwartz, are Apy, Lemmerman, Schlerf, and Houff.  Baltimore studios represented include J. H. Schaefer (John Henry Schaefer), Ernst Rudolph, Perkins (Harry Lenfield Perkins), and Russell (Mrs. Dora C. Russell).

I chose to start with this oversized (6″x8″) J. H. Schaefer cabinet card photograph because, despite its condition, this portrait represents the core of the Schwartz family:

Seated, center: John G. Schwartz and his wife Anna C. Schlerf; to their right, Edna F. M. Schwartz (1893-1975);  to their left, Anna D. Schwartz (1880-1963).

Standing, left to right, are John and Anna’s three sons:  George H. Schwartz (1886-1968) Walter H. Schwartz (1883-1965), and John F. Schwartz (b. abt. 1881).

Here is what I’ve been able to learn about John G. Schwartz.

He was born in an as-yet-unidentified part of Germany. The earliest census record for him I’ve found is 1880, when he married and listed as a “feed dealer.”

In 1900, he identified himself as a grocer, and the census-taker recorded his year of immigration as 1856. The family lived on North Schroeder Street.

Sometime between 1900 and 1910, the family moved to 520 N. Fulton Avenue, an area of three story, two- and three-bay Italianate row houses.

According to his Baltimore SUN obituary, John G. Schwartz “for the last 50 years conducted a stall in Lexington Market. He was one of the pioneers in its development.” He was said to have among his living relations a sister, Mrs. Caroline Mable, and a brother, Frederick Schwartz. John was a member of St. Paul’s “German Evangelical Lutheran Church,” and was buried in their cemetery in a neighborhood called Violetville.

The Violetville St. Paul’s Cemetery is located at 1022 Joh Avenue in Baltimore, across from what is now Violetville United Methodist Church. It’s here that I believe he is buried. The graves of his two daughters, Anna Schwartz and Edna Schwartz, have already been located there by diligent volunteers. I am hopeful his and his wife’s graves will eventually be located nearby.

The photographer, John H. Schaefer (1830-1921), was born in Hessen-Darmstadt, Germany, and belonged to the same church as the Schwartz family. He is buried in the older St. Paul’s Cemetery.

This older St. Paul’s Cemetery is located adjacent to the grounds of Druid Hill Park. It’s also known as “Martini’s St. Paul’s Cemetery,” or “St. Paul’s Cemetery Druid Hill Park,” and has been the focus of substantial restoration efforts.

The card mount on this photograph is blind embossed “J. H. Schaefer and Son,” so this must have been taken after Schaefer’s son, John William Schaefer, joined the business. The address, unfortunately, has been lost with the disintegration of the mount, but based on the appearance of the children, I’m guessing the family sat for this portrait around 1905.

The Schwartz family is posed perfectly conventionally and perfectly harmoniously: elders at the center, flanked by their two daughters, and backed by their three grown sons. It’s a photograph that speaks of family success, both professional and personal. Only Walter’s slight scowl, echoing his father’s stern stare, hints at the emotional life beneath this perfect image of middle class respectability.

Emmitsburg Physician Robert Lewis Annan and the Enigma of Franklin F. Kuhn

Again with the doctors! Portraits of Maryland physicians keep finding me. This cabinet card photograph by Kuhn & Cummins is identified as “Robert Lewis Annan Octb. 13th 1880.”

It wasn’t hard learn his identity; the Annans were a prominent Presbyterian family of Emmitsburg, Frederick County, Maryland. There is quite a bit about the Annans, and Dr. Robert Lewis Annan specifically, on the web, thanks to the Emmitsburg Area Historical Society.

Dr. Robert Lewis Annan (1831-1907) was the son of Dr. Andrew Annan and Elizabeth (Motter) Annan. He was descended from Rev. Robert Annan (1742-1819), a Presbyterian minister who came to the American colonies from Scotland before the Revolution and became an ardent patriot.

Andrew Annan came to the Emmitsburg area in 1805. The Annans were merchants, organizers of community endeavors such as the Emmitsburg Water Company, and, with the Horners, founders of the Annan & Horner Bank.

The family faded from Emmitsburg life after the scandal, prosecutions, and seizures of property stemming from the downfall of their bank in 1922.

Robert Lewis Annan attended Washington and Jefferson College near Pittsburgh, Pa., then studied medicine at the University of the City of New York, graduating with an M. D. in 1855. He returned to Emmitsburg and practiced medicine there for the rest of his life. He was married twice: first to Alice Columbia Motter, who died in 1878, and then to Hessie Birnie. They lived in a large brick house adjoining that of his brother, Isaac Annan, in the center of Emmitsburg.

Franklin F. Kuhn (b. abt. 1830, Md.) partnered with James S. Cummins (1841-1895) as Kuhn & Cummins ca. 1874-1880, according to Kelbaugh’s Directory of Maryland Photographers 1839-1900. From 1882 to 1886, Kuhn partnered with John Philip Blessing in the Baltimore firm Blessing & Kuhn–this is reflected in the 1883, 1884 and 1885 Baltimore city directories. In the 1886 Woods’ Baltimore Directory, Kuhn is absent, and the name becomes Blessing & Co., at the same address–46 N. Charles Street.

Much more is known about Cummins and Blessing than Kuhn, and as I researched this photograph, I found my interest in Franklin Kuhn overshadowing the portrait’s subject.

Kuhn worked as a photographer in Atlanta, Ga. after and perhaps during the Civil War. His name appears on 1866 tax lists and 1867 voter rolls for Atlanta, and a Franklin Kuhn, born in Maryland, took the oath of allegiance in Fulton County, Ga.  in 1867. In 1870, he appears in the Federal Census in Atlanta as a photographer, married, with a daughter, Sarah E. Kuhn,  born in Georgia about 1867.

I found on Flickr  a set of vintage photographs taken at F. Kuhn’s Pioneer Gallery, 290 White Hall Street, Atlanta, and I think this is probably Franklin Kuhn. A search for this gallery name brings up a smattering of photographs, all in carte de visite format. Subjects are clearly dressed in 1860s styles or Civil War uniforms.

An advertisement for “Kuhn’s Photograph Gallery,” at “new” No. 19 Whitehall Street, appears in the 1870 directory for Atlanta. In 1871, he was advertising as “Kuhn & Smith,” “up stairs, 27 Whitehall street.” His name does not appear in the 1872 directory; Smith appears now as “Smith & Motes” at 27 Whitehall Street.

An 1873 Baltimore directory lists a Frank Kuhn, photographer, at 48 N. Charles, so it appears that ca. 1872-1873, he moved his family back to Baltimore, and they are in Baltimore in the 1880 federal census.

I found a record of a Franklin Kuhn who served with Company K of the 15th Michigan Infantry and, intriguingly, mustered out at Jonesboro, Georgia, about 20 miles south of Atlanta, in 1864. Could this have been Frank Kuhn the photographer?

Franklin F. Kuhn surfaces in 1866, then disappears from records after 1885. Where was he born? Who were his parents? Where was he before the Civil War? Why did he go to Atlanta? What took him back to Baltimore after 1870? Where and when did he die? I am troubled by a nagging enigma that Dr. Annan, or any number of Maryland doctors, can’t cure.

Anatomy of a Back-Mark: Belva Wiles and Raymond Lycurgus Kelly, Frederick, Maryland

I gathered in this oversized cabinet card portrait of miller Raymond Lycurgus Kelly and Belva Grace Wiles Kelly because I knew they were life-long residents of Frederick County, Maryland. What has stumped me is the name of the Frederick photographer who took the photograph.

The blind embossed mark was used in the early days of carte de visites by photographers such as the Bendann Brothers and Henry Pollock. After the great excesses of photographic advertising back-marks of the 1880s and 1890s, the blind emboss made a comeback as a tasteful, restrained style that comported with early 1900s tastes.

But if an impression is not made deeply enough, such marks can be hard to read. One can make out “Frederick, Md.”and “Studio,” but the name of the studio or photographer, written in flowing script, is nigh impossible to decipher.

One thing I could see was that the photographer’s name had to be short.

My investigation started with research into the portrait’s subjects to get a sense of the time this photo might have been taken.

Popular miller and auction sales clerk Raymond Lycurgus Kelly (1890-1958) married Belva Grace Wiles (1887-1956), daughter of Sarah Hummer and Lewistown farmer Americus Wiles (1846-1905), about 1910-1911. After their marriage, Raymond and Belva lived in the Walkersville area, and were active in the Mount Pleasant United Methodist Church, just south of Walkersville.

Raymond was just 21 when he married, and he certainly looks quite young in this photograph, so the photo could have been taken ca. 1910-1915.

Next stop: a 1915 directory of Frederick and environs. I found several people listed as photographers:

Samuel E. Homer, 236 Dill Avenue

John F. Kreh, 217 W. South Street

E. Gay Leidweidge, 334 N. Market Street

John W. Ridenour, 108 E. South Street

Gibson Clinton Smith,  39-1/2 N. Market Street

In a May 1917 “Who’s Who” business directory published in the Frederick Post, I found several other photographers:

Rogers Studio, 7 N. Market Street (George E. Rogers and his sons Charles A.  and Philip, and  daughter-in-law Ruth)

Byerly’s Studio, 27 N. Market Street (Charles Byerly, son of J. Davis Byerly)

W. A. Burger’s Studio, 19 N. Market Street (William Alexander Burger)

I ruled out the surnames Ridenour and Leidweidge as too long. My best guess is that the mark is that of John Frederick “Frank” Kreh (1861-1939).

Kreh, like Burger, was trained by J. Davis Byerly, starting at the age of 15. In 1895, Kreh went out on his own, calling his business “Kreh’s Art Studio” and “Kreh Photo Co.”

For 60 years, he did all sorts of photographic work, until his retirement in 1935–landscapes and historic sites for postcards, architectural and construction photos, photos of all sorts of events, as well as studio portraits. Chances are good that if you have family who lived in the Frederick area during the 20th century, you have a photo by Kreh in your album somewhere.

Got an idea about the name of the photographer on this portrait? Let me know.

Frederick Kreh is buried an unmarked grave in Mount Olivet Cemetery, Frederick, Md., next to his son, Leslie Kreh (1892-1903).

Joe Hammersla and the Pryor Boys, King Studio, Hagerstown

This cabinet card photograph of a group of men drew me with its appealing sense of playful, relaxed spontaneity and emotional expressiveness, rare qualities in nineteenth century photographs.

Taken at the studio of William Brown King in Hagerstown, Maryland, this portrait also attracted me because of the identifications on the back: Scott Pryor, James Pryor, Clinton Draper, John Pryor, and, mysteriously, the name “Hammerslea.”

Kelbaugh’s Directory of Maryland Photographers 1839-1900 dates King photos marked 46 & 48 W. Washington Street, Hagerstown, to the period 1891-1901. This gave me a rough way to gauge the birth dates of the men. The younger men had to be in their early to mid-twenties, so they would have been born in the 1860s-1870s, and the elderly central figure couldn’t have been born much later than  the 1840s.

So, off to ancestry.com I went to start researching possible candidates. I ended up creating a tree for the Pryor family, eventually focusing on the descendants of Jacob Pryor (1805-1889), a Frederick County farm laborer and stave-maker.

His son, John Emmanuel Pryor, had in turn three sons who are good candidates for the three young Pryors in this photo.

John Emmanuel Pryor was a shoemaker who lived in the Hauvers district of Frederick County, Md. His sons, Millard Scott Pryor (1860-1937), John Tracy Pryor (1862-1944), and James Albert Pryor (1872-1919), fit the bill.

Millard, who sometimes went by Scott M. Pryor, married Carrie Redman, and worked as a laborer in the Catoctin district of Frederick County. He eventually got work as a track sweeper, but on these modest means raised seven children.

Brother John Tracy Pryor scraped by as a day laborer. He lost his wife, Alice Swope, before 1900 and was left with two children, romantically named Commodore Perry Pryor and Beatrice Pryor. No doubt John’s mother, with whom they lived, helped to raise them. Their situation improved after 1920: He owned his own farm, and his son Commodore Perry had a good job as a mail carrier.

James Albert Pryor, who worked as a molder in a machine shop, raised six children on Ringgold Road with his wife Carrie Winters Pryor.

Young Clinton Albert Draper (1872-1960) related via marriage to the Pryors via his aunt Urillia E. Draper’s marriage to Robert E. Pryor, turned out to be the adventurer of the group: With his wife, Irene Toms Draper, he lived in Iowa and North Dakota before emigrating to Saskatchewan, Canada in 1916 with their three children, Franklin, Emeline, and John.

Clinton Albert Draper appears on Canadian voter lists as a farmer in Weyburn, Saskatchewan, in 1935 and 1945, and then in Midale, Saskatchewan in the 1950s; he died in Midale, and may be buried there.

But the star of the show is clearly Joseph Absalom Hammersla (1832-1912). Looking away to the left of the camera, he relaxes in the center of all this crowding, boyish energy like a man who knows where he belongs in the world and rests content.

I’m confident in my identification because another researcher on ancestry.com posted a different portrait that matches mine unmistakably.

A prosperous miller, he was born in Frederick, Maryland and died in Berkeley County, West Virginia. During the Civil War, he served on the Union side with the 1st Maryland Cavalry Potomac Home Brigade. According to an article on old mills in the Martinsburg, West Virginia Journal, Joseph Hammersla bought the Eversole mill on Tullis’s Branch in 1891, and descendants operated it to grind grain and cut lumber into the 1920s.

I also found an advertisement in the Hagerstown, Md. Herald and Torchlight for “Old Uncle Joe Hammersla’s Saloon,” dated 27 September 1876. The saloon offered “frogs, pigs feet, tripe,” and “Genuine Milwaukee Lager,” among other delights, “under the Lyceum,” a lecture and performance hall located near the Washington County Courthouse on West Washington Street.

He was appointed postmaster of Littletown, Berkeley County, West Virginia in 1895. He and his  second wife Indiana Morris Hammersla (1848-1929) are buried in Rose Hill Cemetery, Hagerstown, Md.

Hammersla moved to Hedgesville, Berkeley County, West Virginia, between 1870 and 1880, so this photograph may have been taken on a visit back to Hagerstown.

My authority on the life and career of William Brown King is Stephen Recker, author of Rare Images of Antietam and the Photographers Who Took Them.

Brown trained in the Baltimore studio of James S. Cummins. Brown came to Hagerstown with his wife, Lelia Hall King, and their son William F. King, in the late 1880s.

Both King and his wife had fathers who’d served in the Civil War: King’s on the Union side and Hall’s on the Confederate.  King’s father, Robert G. King (1834-1886), was a major in Co. C, Purnell’s Legion, Maryland Infantry. Lelia’s father, James Reid Hall (1830-1904), was a sergeant with Co. A, 40th Virginia Infantry. The two had faced each other in some of the same battles, including the Seige of Petersburg.

All of the subjects in King’s portrait are dressed in rough work clothes and scuffed boots, perhaps reflecting the spontaneous nature of the photograph. They lean together and on one another, affectionate and informal and filled with life. While we may never know what brought these five men together on that day, we still feel the glow of their vigorous humanity.

Field Trip to Philadelphia: Florence Fisher Webb West

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On first reacquainting myself with Baltimore and environs some years ago, one thing that impressed me was the refreshingly utilitarian method of naming roads. Near my grandparents’ and great-grandparents’ homes runs Philadelphia Road, which I prefer to call “the” Philadelphia Road–because that’s exactly what it was–the road to Philadelphia.

Recently I found myself  taking a metaphorical trip up the Philadelphia Road to explore the family ties of Mrs. Florence Fisher Webb West. After acquiring  a cabinet card identified as Mrs. Frank West by the Russell & Co. studio, No. 5 North Charles Street, Baltimore, I became increasingly interested in a collection of related family photos, mostly taken in Philadelphia.

Florence Fisher Webb was born in Philadelphia about 1871 to bookkeeper Samuel Webb (1842-1932) and Maria Christiana (Dunnott) Webb (1845-1928). Florence spent at least part of her childhood in the Philadelphia household of her aunt and uncle, Eliza Dunnott Gibson and bookbinder George Gibson.

Florence’s middle name honors her maternal grandmother, Elizabeth Fisher Dunott (1824-1897). The Dunott family appears to have originated in Delaware, while the Webbs go far back in Philadelphia. Florence’s grandfather, John Webb, went to sea as a youth, served with the city militia during the nativist riots of 1844, and prospered as a hotel owner.

Florence married hardware salesman Frank West in 1897, son of Emma and Edwin West (1844-1909), an English-born bank clerk. Florence and Frank had one child, Jack Edwin West, born in 1899. Frank does not appear to have done particularly well financially. At first they lived with her parents at 1706 N. Sydenham Street, a neighborhood of three-story, two-bay Italianate row houses near what is now Temple University. In 1910 he gave his occupation as manufacturer of garters. In 1920 he was a “sanitary engineer” at an ordnance depot in Salem County, New Jersey.

1930 found Florence a widow. She and her son were again living with her parents on Sydenham Street in Philadelphia. After that, the trail goes cold. I know she was alive in 1932, because I found a record of invoices sent to her for the funeral and grave for her father with that date, addressed to her at 1706 N. Sydenham Street. That is the last trace of Florence Fisher Webb West.

Her son Jack lived alone in 1940, and gave his occupation at salesman in a sporting goods store. I learned that he served in the Army during World War II, but not what became of him afterwards.

I have another Russell & Co. portrait of Florence’s mother Maria, possibly taken during the same period. But what drew them to Baltimore? I still don’t know.

Hubert Slifer Smith at Work and Leisure

It’s unusual to find two photographs of the same individual–and even more unusual to find an “occupational” photo. So I was very excited when I found these two for sale, both idenfied in ink on the reverse as “Hubert Smith.”

The first, taken at Academy Studio, Cumberland, Maryland, shows Hubert dressed as a baker, holding one of the implements of his trade.

It wasn’t hard to locate a Hubert Slifer Smith (1885-1949) occupation baker, in the census records for Cumberland.

Born in Boonsboro, Washington County, Maryland to Omar S. Smith and Emma F. Houpt, Hubert Smith (1885-1949) married Scottish immigrant Elizabeth Walker. He and Elizabeth lived in Cumberland, where Hubert worked as a baker.

In 1917, when he registered for the draft, he was working for John M. Streett.

Streett had two bakeries, one in Frostburg, and one in Cumberland, at 80 Centre Street and later at 200-204 Centre Street. I’ve found adversisements in trade publications for Streett’s Famous Mother’s Bread; he also called his business Pure Food Bakery. An undated photograph in the Herman and Stacia Miller Collection shows Streett’s bakery with the proprietor and his workers standing out front.

Streett boasted about the cleanliness of his establishment, a feature dwelt upon in the Baker’s Review of 1915. “Leading grocers throughout Cumberland and ‘up the creek’ sell and recommend Streett’s Mother’s Bread,” said an ad in The Catholic Red Book of Western Maryland.

In the first photo, the skinny, slope-shouldered youth, almost lost in his uniform, wears an elaborate ribbon on his gleaming white shirt, but I haven’t been able to make out what it says. My best guess for the occasion of the portrait is one of Cumberland’s Labor Day parades, in which groups of tradesmen and craftsmen marched, dressed in the uniforms of their occupations.

The elaborate pin with a ribbon and badge resembles  old lodge badges of the Knights of Pythias and the Independent Order of Odd Fellows that I’ve seen.

Confident manhood replaces callow youth in the portrait of Hubert Smith taken at the McCune Studio in Hagerstown, Maryland. Smith proudly shows off his dress clothes, including a top coat, gloves, and a natty homberg hat.

The McCune Studio, like the Academy Studio, isn’t listed in Kelbaugh’s Directory of Maryland Photographers 1839-1900. But Charles Brewer McCune (1869-1953) is memorialized on findagrave.com with his obituary and a photograph of his grave at Rose Hill Cemetery, Hagerstown. According to that obituary, McCune practiced professional photography in Hagerstown for 35 years.

Both of these cabinet cards are non-standard sizes. The earlier card  mount measures 3″ x 6″  and the later McCune card is 5″ x 8″ –perhaps chosen to emphasize his lanky build. Both mounts, with their neutral colors and understated blind-embossed advertising marks reflect the more refined card portrait style of the early 1900s.

The Smiths’ lives were marked by the singular tragedy of deaths of their only child and grandchild.

Doris E. Smith (b. 1909, Cumberland, Md.) married handsome US Naval Academy graduate Robert Allen Joseph English (1899-1969), and they had a daughter, Roberta, in 1943.

Three years later, with her husband in Europe on extended duty with General Eisenhower’s staff, Doris killed herself and her daughter using gas from the oven in their Arlington, Virginia home.

“With humor and distinction”: Judge John Hunt Hendrickson

Young John Hunt Hendrickson (1887-1951) had this portrait taken while at school at Western Maryland College, in Westminster, Carroll Co. Md.

The operator at Sereck Shalecross Wilson’s (1870-1943) Westminster studio placed the solemn youth against a soft background and lit him from the right to throw his long, straight nose, clear pale skin and wide, expressive mouth into relief.

The reverse of the cream card mount with blind embossed lion advertising mark bears an inscription and the year 1907, making Hendrickson about 20 at the time of this photograph.

The understated background and restrained, oversized card mount reflect the period’s move away from the visual excesses of the 1880s and 1890s. Wilson  took many photographs for Western Maryland College year books; examples can be found in the digital archives of Western Maryland College. The Carroll County Times also has a few of his portraits on its website.

Hendrickson earned a BA and was class valedictorian, speaking on “Reason in Leadership.”

After graduation, his father, John David Hendreickson, prosperous owner of The Model, a dry goods store in Frederick, sent him to Harvard Law School.

At Harvard, he told a Portland, Oregon reporter in 1947, not knowing where he would end up locating, he took very little law, and soaked up all the operas,  plays, lectures and concerts that he could.

With a poor showing at law school, Hendrickson decided to go  west. He went to Portland, Oregon, where his first job was with the firm Veazie & Veazie, run by Oregon natives Arthur Lyle Veazie (1868-1941) and J. Clarence Veazie, whose forebears, the Lyles, Scotts and Veazies, and settled in Oregon in the 1840s, ’50s and ’60s.

Hendrickson had deep roots in Frederick County, Maryland. His great-grandfather, weaver and farmer John Hendrickson (1801-1982), was born in the Johnsville district of that county.

One strong thread of the family’s story is the move from country to town, from farm labor to store owner to educated professional.

Judge Hendrickson’s father was brought up to hard farm work, but left that life to become a clerk in a store at the age of 16.

Then, after having bought the store and made it one of the most successful in Frederick, J. D. Hendrickson sent two of his three  sons to college and took the third, Russell Ames Hendrickson (1891-1968), into his business.

J. D. Hendrickson’s  third son, Caroll Henshaw Hendrickson (1892-1971), attended Cornell University and ultimately joined his brother Russell in the family firm.

In Portland, John Hunt Hendrickson found his calling as a legal educator and a judge. He began teaching commercial law  to bankers in 1913, then became an instructor and eventually dean of Northwestern College of Law until 1943. He was elected a district court judge in 1926 and held that position with the high respect of his peers until, wheelchair-bound from multiple schlerosis, he retired from the bench in 1947.

The circa 1820 brick and stone home where he grew up, at 119 West Second Street, in Frederick, still stands, as does the building where his father and then his brothers operated what became Hendrickson’s Department Store until the 1970s.

Judge Hendrickson died on 28 June 1951. He is most likely entombed with his wife, Winifred Birrell Hendrickson, at Riverview Abbey Mausoleum and Crematory, Portland, Oregon.

The home where they brought up their two sons, Ames Birrell Hendrickson and John H. Hendrickson Jr., stands very much the same at 2821 South West Upper Drive.

The Frederick County Historical Society has a number of early Hendrickson family photos on display on its website.

Sources:

Bypath Biographies: J. Hunt Hendrickson, by Elizabeth Salway Ryan, Portland Oregonian, 22 June 1947

History of Frederick County, Maryland, Volume One, by Thomas John Chew Williams and Folger McKinsey, originally published in Frederick, Maryland, 1910

Commencements 1901-1920, McDaniel College Digital Archives