Portrait of a Painter’s Daughter: Addie Bogle

Carte de visite of Addie Bogle by Stanton & Butler, Baltimore, Md.

Reverse of carte de visite portrait of Addie Bogle.

The ebayer I bought this 1860s Stanton & Butler carte de visite from thought the surname was Boyle, but that “y” looked much more like a “g” to me, and so I set out to find an Adelaide Bogle who might have lived in Maryland and passed through Baltimore in the 1860s.

I promptly came across a good candidate: Adelaide Ann “Nannie” Bogle (1847-1917), daughter of South Carolina artist Robert Bogle (1817-1865) and Rosalie Adelaide Ann (Bailey) Bogle (1828-1896).

Census records show that the Bogles lived in a number of locations that could have sent them through Baltimore between 1850 and 1880, including Anne Arundel County, Georgetown, outside Washington, DC, and Edesville, in Kent County, Maryland.

More importantly, Robert Bogle is listed as an artist at 60 McCulloh Street on page 463 of the 1860 Woods’ Business Directory of Baltimore.

According to Kelbaugh’s Directory of Maryland Photographers, Stanton & Butler operated at Fayette and Charles streets between 1864 and 1871.  This time frame seems to fit the age and dress of our subject, who would have been about 20 years old in 1867.

I don’t know enough to judge more than roughly about clothing, but her hair, especially, seems to indicate an 1860s date. She wears it, either crimped or naturally wavy, drawn back behind her ears and gathered low on her neck, possibly in a net.

Later women’s hair fashions moved to up-does with “love locks,” false hair pieces, and then frizzed bangs.

Addie’s hair style shows off black glass or jet earrings that match a small black cross worn as a pendant, perhaps as mourning jewelry worn following the passing of her father in 1865.

Addie’s father was twin to the better-known Carolinas artist James Bogle (1871-1873). The National Academy of Design has several of James Bogle’s portraits in its collection, and others are likely scattered throughout the eastern seaboard, in public and private collections.

In 1884, Addie married Dr. James LaRoche Beckett of Johns Island, Charleston County, South Carolina. They had one son in 1890, James Augustine Young Beckett. Later they moved to Eufaula, Alabama, where Dr. Beckett died in 1910.

Dr. Beckett’s ancestry leads back to the colonial roots of slave-holding Johsn Island and Edisto Island, and include surnames such as Seabrook, LaRoche, and Murray.

Before her marriage, Addie Bogle and her siblings appear to have spent a good deal of their time in the Edesville area of Kent County, Maryland.

Addie’s brother Robert Bogle (1845-1905) farmed there; the youngest of the Bogle children, Newton S. Bogle (1863-1918)  was postmaster and storekeeper on what is still known as Bogle’s Wharf on Eastern Neck Island, once a busy steamer stop on the Chester River. The area is now part of the Eastern Neck National Wildlife Refuge.

According to the Archives of Ontario, Canada, Eldridge Stanton was born 7 March 1834 in Cobourg, Ontario and educated at Victoria University. In 1871, he sold his part of Stanton & Butler in Baltimore and returned to Toronto, where he practiced professional photography in several locations.

Stanton served as president of the Photographic Association of Canada in 1887-1888. He died in Toronto in 1907 and is buried in St. James Cemetery, Toronto, Ontario.

The Butler brothers, Joseph and Samuel, were also Canadians who operated a photography business in Baltimore, but I have not been able to find anything more about them beyond the 1870 census. They are listed as “Butler Brothers” in the photographers’ section of Woods Baltimore Business Directory for 1868-1869.

Rosalie Adelaide Bailey Bogle is buried in Trinity Episcopal Church Cemetery, Edisto Island, South Carolina.

Adelaide Bogle Beckett died in January of 1917 and is buried in Johns Island Presbyterian Church Cemetery, Johns Island, South Carolina.

Many thanks to the countless genealogy researchers who have documented the lives, deaths and last resting places of these families.

Malcolm Westcott Hill, St. Paul’s School, 1893

According to the notes penned on the back of the mount, this cabinet card portrait depicts Malcolm Westcott Hill, age 18, in 1893, while Hill was a student at St. Paul’s School in Garden City, Long Island, an Episcopal boarding prep school with a progressive science curriculum.

Young Hill went on to study at Johns Hopkins University and became an electrical engineer and electrical contractor. During the first World War, he attended Engineer Officer’s Training Camp at American University in Washington, DC, serving the Corps of Engineers until 1919, when he mustered out with the rank of captain.

Hill’s family had roots going back to two of the republic’s earliest conflicts: The American Revolution on his mother’s side, and on his father’s side, the War of 1812.

Malcolm’s grandfather, Thomas Gardner Hill(1793-1849), was a sergeant in Captain McKane’s Company, Maryland 27th Regiment during the War of 1812, and said to have been at the Battle of North Point. Malcolm’s father, Thomas Hill (1834-1909) was a prominent businessman of Baltimore.

Malcolm’s mother, Harriett Louise Westcott, could trace her roots back to the Revolutionary War, when her great-grandfather, Capt. Samuel Westcott (1757-1854), commanded a company in Col. Silas Newcomb’s First Battalion, of Cumberland County, New Jersey.

Malcolm’s grandfather George Burgin Westcott (1801-1887), relocated from New Jersey to Chestertown, Kent County, Maryland, where he amassed land and wealth and served as president of Kent National Bank,  president of the Mutual Fire Insurance Company of Kent County, member of the Board of Governors of Washington College, and was prominent in the Episcopal Church.

The house they occupied in Chestertown from the 1830s to 1910, now known as the Geddes Piper House, is the headquarters of the Kent County Historical Society. They owned 320 acres of  “Hinchingham,” west of Chestertown, on the bay, but there is no evidence that they lived in the historic house of the same name.

The studio where this portrait was taken was the busy and successful business owned by Harry Lenfield Perkins (b. abt. 1854, Maryland), and founded by his father, Palmer Lenfield Perkins (b. 1824, Burlington Co., New Jersey).  According to Ross Kelbaugh’s Directory of Maryland Photographers, 311 E. Baltimore Street (old 103 W. Baltimore) was the studio’s address 1887-1897.

Like the Hills and the Westcotts, P. L. Perkins was a zealous and involved member of the Episcopal church. The Perkins belonged to Ascension Protestant Episcopal Church, Lafayette and Arlington streets (from 1932 called St. James Episcopal Church Lafayette Square); the Hills to St. Peter’s, from 1868 located at Druid Hill Avenue and Lanvale Street in Bolton Hill (today owned by Bethel A. M. E. Church).

Perkins chose a vignette style for this bust portrait, in which the background is burned out to create a soft, almost floating effect. Malcolm’s head is tilted to the left, his eyes raised up, as if gazing into his promising future–a style now  familiar to generations of school portrait victims.

St. Paul’s School for Boys, an impressive Gothic Revival complex built ca. 1880, was dedicated to the memory of the founder of Garden City, Long Island, Alexander Turner Stewart. It was run by the Episcopal Diocese of Long Island. Empty for decades, preservationists have been engaged for years in a struggle to save the buildings from demolition and find new uses for it.