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.

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.

“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

From Susan Bear’s Album: Martin L. Hightman

It’s tricky, trying to glue the fragments  of a family back together through photographs.

This carte de visite by an unidentified photographer is one of only 11 in the Susan Bear album that has some identifying text. In the Washington County, Maryland Bear/Baer family tree I’ve constructed so far, the surname Heightman had not come up. Only when I searched ancestry.com records with a different spelling, Hightman, and without the initials M. L., did something slip into place.

A Martin L. Hightman was born into a Burkittsville, Frederick County family of dry goods merchants about 1852.  Burial records for other Burkittsville Hightmans brought up the grave records of his parents: John Hightman (1825-1891) and M. Elizabeth (Bear) Hightman (1825-1913).

One of Susan Bear’s sisters was named Mary Elizabeth, and her birth year, about 1826, fit. Was there a record of a marriage between a Mary Elizabeth Bear and a John Hightman that fit the time frame?

There was. Mary Elizabeth Bear and John Hightman married in Frederick County on 2 October 1851.

This photograph had to be of Mary Elizabeth Bear Hightman’s eldest son, Martin Luther  Hightman (1852-1891). It was, judging by the subject’s age and the style of the carte, probably taken in the early to mid-1860s.

Why it lacks a photographer’s imprint is hard to say. Certainly the photographers of Hagerstown and Frederick of the era–E. M. Recher, Jacob Byerly and others–promoted their work vigorously with a variety of advertising backmarks. The photographer may have been one of the many itinerants who worked during the Civil War. Or it could have been a copy.

Like his father, Martin L. Hightman became a Burkittsville dry goods merchant. He was also the village’s postmaster. He and his wife Lovetta Arnold had five children: Frederick Arnold, Cora, John Roy, Harrison Martin, and Mabell E. Hightman.

Frederick obtained a bachelor’s degree at Gettysburg College in 1902 and graduated from Gettysburg Theological Seminary in 1905.  In 1908, Rev. Frederick Arnold Hightman  (1876-1967) founded the northeast Baltimore congregation that became Ephiphany Evangelical Lutheran Church. The stone church in the Gothic Revival style still flourishes on Raspe Avenue just south of Belair Road.

Martin and Lovetta Hightman are buried in Burkittsville Union Cemetery in Frederick County. Rev. Hightman is buried in Moreland Memoral Park, Parkville, Maryland, a few miles from his church.

Old Mount Zion Lutheran Church, Feagaville, Maryland

This frame church, located on the Jefferson Pike just outside Frederick, Maryland, lost its tower and other features when it was converted into apartments about 1950.  Does it still exist?

According to the Feagaville Survey District document that was filed in 1980, the church was built in 1880. The building to the right was a stone schoolhouse built ca. 1840-1850; perhaps it had been whitewashed. The hand-drawn map accompanying the survey document locates the church just north of Feagaville Lane.

A newer, brick church, surrounded by its cemetery, thrives just a few miles away at Mount Zion and Mount Phillip roads.

The history of this church is confusing. The History of Frederick County, Maryland, Volume One, published in 1910, speaks of the church being built 1819, but says it was a stone structure. There is no mention of a frame structure. But, as mentioned above, the 1980 survey says this frame church was built in 1880. The History mentions a new stone church being built on the site in 1885 (p. 503)–but nothing about a brick church.

A contemporary photograph taken by Jody Brumage shows a stone above the new church door on Mount Phillip Road with the date 1885.

Busey Beginning: “Mr. Packard, School Teacher in Liberty Md”

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According to Kelbaugh’s Directory of Maryland Photographers,Virginia-born artist and photogapher Norval Hamilton Busey (1845-1928) opened his first independent gallery and studio in York, Pennsylvania in 1867. York Area Photographers 1840-1997 (spelling his name “Norvel Bushey”) places him in York 1868-1869, after which Busey moved on to Baltimore.

Busey was one of a number of photographers who tenanted the studio in  “Rupp’s Building,” or the Rupp Building, on York’s main square, between 1847 and 1900 (York Area Photographers 1840-1997).

He was the son of a Methodist minister, the Rev. Thomas H. Busey. Rev. Busey died when Norval was about 11, so he was raised by his mother, Sarah Neely McLanahan Busey.

Norval married Miss Emma V. Laley, the daughter of a Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia armory worker,  in 1866, and they had four children: Blanche, Rosamund, Ina, and Norval Hamilton Busey Jr.

Sometime between 1880 and 1900 Busey moved his family to Manhattan, where he returned to his first love, drawing and painting, and opened an art gallery.

This conventional, stiff carte de visite portrait of a gentleman identified as “Mr. Packard, school teacher in Liberty Md.,” is decidedly journeyman’s work. The stereotypical props of 1860s card portraits are all there: the chair and table, drapery, and simple, unembellished background were all standard for the time.

Busey has chosen an awkard pose, not quite bust, not quite full-length, and his use of light and shadow is not as skillful as it would become in his Baltimore work.

The photographer has tried to indicate Packard’s profession by giving him a pen, paper and inkwell, but the subject’s somewhat blank stare robs the pose of naturalness.

So who was “Mr. Packard”? There was a Benjamin F. Packard born 1826 in New York, living in Fredericktown in 1850, occcupation school teacher, who fits the bill. Liberty was in Frederick County.

In 1910, a Benjamin Packard lived with his sister Helen (1829-1908) and brother-in-law, writer, attorney and judge John Gibson (1829-1890). Gibson was the author/editor of an oft-referenced 1886 History of York County, Pennsylvania.

The Gibsons and Benjamin F. Packard (1836-1905) are buried in Prospect Hill Cemetery, York, Penn.

Dr. Oleriannus Alvin Cover in Baltimore

This cabinet card portrait of Iowa physician Oleriannus Alvin Cover was likely taken ca. 1893, while Cover was attending the Baltimore Medical College, from which he graduated that year.

A biographical sketch tells us that after taking an MD from Baltimore Medical College, Cover  went to Philadelphia for further study at Jefferson Medical College, so his sojourn in Baltimore was probably relatively brief.

The man with the very unusual name of Oleriannus was born in Union County, Illinois in 1862 to Frederick County, Maryland-born farmer and devout Methodist Abraham Cover and Sophia Miller Cover.

Cover came to the medical profession relatively late in life. After graduating from Southern Illinois Normal School, he taught school and served as a principal at Alto Pass High School in southern Illinois for ten years.

He began studying medicine in 1891, at the Keokuk College of Physicians and Surgeons. After several apprenticeships and MD degrees from both Baltimore Medical College and Jefferson Medical College, Cover settled down to practice in Seymour, Iowa, a small coal town in Wayne County that owed its existence primarily to its proximity to the railroad.

Cover participated enthusiastically in the political and social life of the town: He was an active Mason, Odd Fellow, and a fervent Republican.

Dr. Cover married Jessie Llewellyn of Seymour in 1898 and they had a son, William Llewellyn Cover, in 1908.  Dr. Cover died in a train accident in Rock Island, Illinois in 1916, and was buried in South Lawn Cemetery, Seymour.

After Dr. Cover’s death, Jesse and their son William moved to Los Angeles, to live with Jessie’s brother. William died in San Bernardino, California in 1993.

I suspect that the “Rogers” in this studio partnership was Albert L. Rogers, who briefly occupied the same studio location, 112 N. Charles Street, under his own name, A. L. Rogers, ca. 1891.

A Byerly Beauty

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This ca. 1880s cabinet card portrait was taken by John Davis Byerly (1839-1914) at his studio on Frederick’s Market Street,  founded by his father, Jacob Byerly (1807-1883), in 1842.

John joined his father’s business ca. 1863-1869, during which period their photographs bore the business name J. Byerly & Son.

Around 1869-1870, photographs began bearing the name J. Davis Byerly. In 1899, John retired and turned the business over to his son Charles Byerly (1874-1944), who ran the studio until it was destroyed in a building collapse in 1915.

A number of details, both of setting and of dress, place this photograph in the 1880s.

The advertising that  fills the card’s reverse employs a japonisme decorative motif, with a bamboo frame accented with small blossoms.

The subject’s dress features mid- to late-1880s details such as a high round collar, relatively tight sleeves set high on the shoulder, a bodice decorated with buttons, dark velvet trim and tucks. Her hair is worn pulled back, low on the head, with  curled bangs typical of the decade, as is her small, high-crowned hat, known as a “capote.”

Increasingly, photographers of the late 19th century used props and painted backgrounds to more closely approximate the naturalness of the best painted portraiture. Darrah distinguishes this more elaborate “staging” of a portrait from simple posing (William C. Darrah, Cartes de Visite in Nineteenth Century Photography, 33).

Byerly may have been thinking of M.A. Root’s instructions in The Camera and The Pencil to “place the model in a very easy and graceful manner” (quoted in Darrah, Cartes, ).

Byerly posed his subject in a faux outdoor setting with fake grass, papier mache tree stump, and painted backdrop, as if the young woman were reading outside her home on a fine spring day. The light emanates from the upper right corner of the frame in imitation of natural sunlight.

The photograph’s decorative framing however, cannot compete with the simple, fresh, confident attractions of its young subject.

As usual, the information and interpretations of the portrait above rely on several key sources: Ross Kelbaugh’s Directory of Maryland Photographers 1839-1900, William C. Darrah’s Cartes de Visite in Nineteenth Century Photography, and Joan Severa’s Dressed for the Photographer: Ordinary Americans and Fashion 1840-1900.