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.

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.

The Lost Patrol: Westminster’s First Boy Scouts

When I acquired this real photo postcard of six boys identified on the reverse as the “First Boy Scouts of Westminster, Md.,” I was captivated by the children’s sober, patriotic, rag-tag resolve. With their wooden drill rifles, home-made khakis, flag and drum, these six boys clearly represent a quasi-military organization. Something about their martial pose and improvised uniforms recalls Archibald Willard’s famous 1875 painting “The Spirit of ’76.”

But these were real boys with real names.  I haven’t been able to find out anything about the photographer, identified only by his last name, Whitehill; nor about the founding of the Boy Scouts in Westminster or Carroll County. I have learned, however, a bit about the origins of scouting that helped me better understand the image. And I was able to trace the boys’ lives and family histories to a certain extent.

Although the scouting movement had many precursors and tributaries, one way to date the origin of scouting is the 1908 publication of  Scouting for Boys: A Handbook for Instruction in Good Citizenship, a short book penned by Robert Baden Powell.

Powell saw how lack of preparedness had hampered self-defense of English settlements in South Africa during the Boer War, but he had also observed the surprisingly effective ways that boys jumped into the breach as messengers and look-outs.

As “Camp Fire Yarn No. 1,” his guide includes a foundational narrative for Scouting: “Mafeking Boy Scouts.” In this tale he recounts the vital role that boys played in the defense of a South African English settlement in 1899-1900. “Every boy ought to learn how to shoot and how to obey orders,” wrote Baden-Powell, “else he is no more good when war breaks out than an old woman. . .” (10).

After his experiences in the English military, Baden Powell worried that what was viewed as the feminizing influence of urban work had sapped men’s ability to defend themselves and their communities, abilities that would be urgently needed to fight for England’s empire. He advocated the notion that by following a few simple, martial rules, groups of boys, even without an adult leader, could self-organize into “patrols” that could teach themselves physical fitness, self-reliance, and key skills for outdoor survival and self-defense in times of war and emergency.

He also viewed scouting as a way to instill norms of good citizenship many believed were being eroded by anonymous urban living. As David McLeod articulates in his 1983 social history Building Character in the American Boy: The Boy Scouts, YMCA, and Their Forerunners, 1870-1920, “Boy Scouting drew upon an anxiety to mold the rising generation into a cohesive, hard-working citizenry–patriotic, disciplined, and conventional in values” (130).

Baden-Powell’s ideas were taken up with enthusiasm in the United States after 1910 as concerns about German militarism grew, and that’s about the time I think this photograph was taken.

All six of these boys were born between 1899 and 1901, two were first cousins, and all but one lived on E. Main Street in Westminster. The boys’ names are written in pencil on the back of the card, and seem to be positioned as to be behind the image of the each boy. So following these placements, here is what I’ve learned about the boys, from left:

Robert Howell Bohn (1899-1922) was the son of Westminster butcher Samuel W. Bohn and and Carolyn M. Frizzell (1878-1964); fellow Scout Robert F. Dinst (see below) was his maternal cousin. Unusual for the day, Carrie divorced Samuel Bohn, married Maryland Trust employee Charles Hellen (1880-1956) and moved with her son to Baltimore after 1910. Robert Bohn died at the age of 23 on 28 March 1922, at the home of his uncle, Meade Ohler, in Westminster. Robert is buried in Westminster Cemetery, Westminster, Md.

The Bohns may have been associated with the German Baptist Church, possibly Beaver Dam Church of the Brethren in Frederick County. The Bohne family came to Frederick County well before the American Revolution; a great deal of genealogical research exists on the Bohne/Boone families in the United States.

James Chesley Bond “Jack” Worthington (1900-1983) was the son of prominent, Yale-educated Maryland attorney Richard Hardesty Worthington (1872-1927) and Eloise “Ella” Bond. In 1910, the Worthingtons lived with Ella’s parents, prosperous local attorney James A. C. Bond and Selena W. Bond. Jack seems to have been a bit of a n’er do well and an adventurer; he was apprehended as a stow-away on a ship from Southhampton, England to New York in 1923; he gave his occupation as “reporter,” but no residence. He died in Pinellas County, Florida; I have not been able to learn his place of burial.

The Worthington lineage goes back to Annapolis in the late 1660s with a Captain John Worthington; part of their history is recorded in The Founders of Anne Arundel and Howard Counties by Joshua Dorsey Warfield.

Lawrence Bruce Fink (1900-1984) was the son of successful Catholic attorney Charles E. Fink and Eliza (Key) Boyle. Lawrence attended Western Maryland College, where he participated in the Student Army Training Corps (SATC). He became the postmaster of Littletown, Adams Co., Pa. and manager of the Shriver Canning Company. He and his wife Mildred had three children by 1940: Agnes, Elizabeth, and Lawrence Jr. Lawrence Sr. is buried in St. Johns Cemetery, Westminster, Md.

Charles E. Fink, who graduated from  St. Mary’s Seminary and University in Baltimore, was a founder and director of the Fidelity and Deposit Company of Maryland, and served as State’s Attorney for Carroll County 1891-1895.

Harvey Roby Shipley (1901-1983) was the son of farmers Joshua Wilbur Shipley and Ella M. Parrish, and descended from a long line of Woolerys district farmers. The Shipleys were early members of Bethesda Methodist Church in Sykesville, founded in 1810. After working on the family farm, Harvey went into produce trucking and founded the Harvey R. Shipley & Sons Trucking Company of Westminster. He is buried in Deer Park Cemetery, Smallwood, Carroll Co., Md.

John W. Shriver (1901-1982) was likely the son of lithography salesman William J. Shriver and Julia Lynch. In 1910, John lived on E. Main Street with his parents and maternal grandparents, John T. and Mary E. Lynch. John Lynch was a prosperous horse dealer and farmer. John Shriver may have descended from Carroll County farmer Andrew Keiser Shriver (1802-1884), grandson of Maryland Militia member Lt. Col. David Shriver (1735-1826). John W. Shriver is buried in New Cathedral Cemetery, Baltimore, Md.

Robert Franklin Dinst (1900-1987) was the son of Pennsylvania-born grocer Herman M. Dinst (1868-1939) and Anna Frizzell (1870-1942). Robert Franklin’s mother and Robert Bohn’s mother, Carrie Frizzell, were sisters; Robert’s grandfather, Francis A., or “Franklin” Dinst (1832-1909), as he called himself, immigrated from Germany in the 1830s with his parents Anthony and Mary, and rose to “master of repairs” for a railroad in Oxford, Adams Co., Pa. Originally of Lutheran heritage, Franklin and Herman Dinst appear to have joined the Methodist Church in York, Pa. The Frizzells were prosperous farmers in Union Mills.

Robert Dinst joined the US Navy in 1918 but apparently never saw combat. He is buried in Meadow Branch Cemetery, Westminster, Md.

Did the patrol thrive and become a troop? Did they stay friends, or did they drift apart? There is so much I would like to know. But for now all I can say is this:  In this moment Baden Powell’s little book brought six boys from very different backgrounds–farmers, attorneys, and small merchants; Catholic, Methodist and Brethren–together as young citizens pledged to a common code.

The Misses Jones Make an Announcement

Students of Carroll County, Maryland local history know Ida, Fannie and Elsie Jones as “the Jones sisters,” or “the Misses Jones,” and remember them as quiet but prolific engines of local culture.

The name of the ladies’ Sykesville studio, which they opened in 1952, has been recalled in various sources as “Sunny Home,” “Sunnyholme,” and “Sunny Holmse.” A reproduction of a Jones sisters RPPC of their Sykesville home, reprinted in Bill Hall’s 2001 pictorial volume Sykesville, shows the sisters wrote it as “Sunny Holme.”

This recently-acquired real photo postcard announcing the August 3rd opening of their “photographic studio and rental library” may depict an earlier incarnation of their enterprise, but I can’t be sure without more research.

The hand-written card was mailed to “Mrs. Charles Williams, Sykesville, Md.” with a one-cent stamp and postmarked August 2nd, but the year is unreadable;  since zip codes were not introduced by the US Postal Service until 1963, it’s possible the card could be from the 1950s.

With its simple composition of an old-fashioned arm chair in a book-lined corner ornamented with family mementos, the photograph they created for this postcard announcement reflects a sense that art and literature were part of an ordinary home’s comforts, not something just for special trips to the big city.

The sisters worked together for decades on photographic expeditions throughout the state, producing hand-colored photographs of buildings, landscapes and studio still-life compositions, postcards and note cards, as well as hand-made table linens and other needle crafts.

According to Mary Ann Ashcraft’s 2007 article in the Carroll County Times, their photographs, on sale at DeVries Hering Hardware Store in Sykesville, were frequently purchased as wedding gifts.

Elsie Sluby Jones (1885-1975), Ashcraft relates, bought a Voightlander camera in the 1930s and took the photos. Ida Webb Jones (1882-1967), who graduated from the storied Maryland Institute in 1916, where she won the class prize in the Design Department, did the printing and hand-coloring. Frances Isabelle Jones (1881-1973) was in charge of the housekeeping and driving to the places throughout Maryland that interested them.

In 1944, the sisters produced a small printed, comb-bound book they called “Maryland History through the Camera’s Eye.” It was meant to be the first of two volumes, but according to Ashcraft, war-time difficulties procuring quality paper quashed plans for the second volume. Copies of the book appear for sale from time to time on the web; it’s unclear how many were printed in total. I recently acquired a copy in good condition for $30.00.

“Maryland History” contains black-and-white prints of homes and other historic sites from all over the state, including Hager’s Mill, in Washington County, Perry Hall in Talbot County, Walnut Grove in Queen Anne’s County, and Carroll County Court House in Westminster, just to name a few of the sites they visited.

Based on my own brief research into the Jones family history, the sisters’ grandfather, Thomas Jones (1810-1899) was a carriage-builder in Rock Hall, Kent County, Maryland. He brought his family to Howard County between 1860 and 1870, where the census records his occupation as farmer, and his worth in land and personal property as $12,000.

If the information in Lawrence Buckley Thomas‘ 1896 work The Thomas Book is correct, Thomas Jones’ parents may have been David Jones (b. abt. 1780) and Maria Thomas (b. 25 June 1788, Cecil Co., Md.) On the Webb side, the sisters were descended from Maine-born merchant David Burbank and Sophia Andrews Burbank.

All three sisters are buried in Springfield Presbyterian Cemetery, Sykesville, along with their parents, Nicholas Sluby Jones (1851-1906) and Julia (Webb) Jones (1856-1932).

Update:  In late November 2013, Dr. Mark Fraser accepted this postcard as a donation to the Sykesville Gate House Museum, which will become the card’s new and permanent home.

More about the Jones sisters:

Bill Hall’s Sykesville by Arcadia Publishing includes a chapter on the sisters, including reproductions of family photographs and images of the sisters’ works.

The Sykesville Gate House Museum of History holds an important collection of Jones sisters work. The Museum has posted on line a brief article about the sisters and six of their images.

The the Pratt Library also owns a small but significant collection of Jones sisters work.

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.

Looking a Maryland Confederate in the Face: D. W. Culpepper Tintype of Charles Harvey Stanley

If the image on this tintype is, as I think possible, Charles Harvey Stanley (1842-1913), then the operator at D. W. Culpepper’s gallery captured the 24-year-old not long after he mustered out of the Confederate army, ca. 1866.

Ross Kelbaugh’s Directory of Maryland Photographers 1839-1900 lists D. W. Culpepper as occupying 127 W. Baltimore Street from 1866-1868. Culpepper has included “Successor to Leach’s” on the back, which helps confirm the date; William Leach occupied that address ca. 1863-1865. He may have bought back the gallery from Culpepper, because Leach again occupied 127 W. Baltimore Street 1868-1870.

If you look at the two other photographs of Charles H. Stanley that are accessible on the web, his distinctive hairline is the same, but on the opposite side. The technology of tintype photography explains this: Tintypes turned a negative image into a positive, so the image is reversed left to right.

One can trace a few faint lines of penciled signature behind the ink. The ink signature is not identical to the one he provided for his portrait and biographical sketch in volume one of 1907’s Men of Mark of Maryland, but there are similarities. If this portrait was a gift to his younger sister Eliza Stanley (1850-1928) she may have inked over the original pencil inscription.

Born in Saybrook, Connecticut but raised in St. Mary’s County and Laurel, Prince George’s County, Maryland, Charles was the son of an outspoken southern sympathizer, Rev. Harvey Stanley (1809-1885). Stanley was rector of Laurel’s Holy Trinity Episcopal Church from 1851 until his death.

During the run-up to the Civil War, Prince George’s County had the highest population of enslaved African-Americans in the state, and much of the white population identified with the Confederacy.

So, clearly, did Charles Stanley. In 1862, he traveled to Virginia to enlist  in the Confederate forces. He joined Company B of the First Maryland Cavalry Regiment and served until the southern forces surrendered in 1865.

By all accounts, Charles Stanley integrated easily and successfully into post-war Prince George’s County life. He studied law,  developed a prosperous practice, and became involved in many of the civic institutions of the county and the state. He was deeply interested in education, and was president of the Prince George’s County Board of School Commissioners as well as a trustee of the Maryland Agricultural College.

During his long career he was also elected to the Maryland House of Delegates, served as mayor of Laurel and as Comptroller for the State of Maryland under Governor Austin L. Crothers.

Both of Charles Stanley’s wives came from southern planter families with deep Maryland roots. Ella Lee Hodges (1844-1881) descended through her mother from some of the founders of Anne Arundel County.   His second wife, Margaret Snowden (1858-1916), was descended from one of the earliest settlers and largest landowners in Maryland, Richard Snowden.

Raised in Maryland’s plantation/slave economy, Charles fought for that way of life and married into it. He and his second wife, Margaret (Snowden) Stanley are buried at Ivy Hill Cemetery, Laurel, Md., in the heart of a region that today, ironically, boasts  the  most highly educated and “wealthiest African American-majority county in the United States.“

“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

The Strange Case of James Burnite SeBastian, DDS

Without the full story, you have to read between the lines, and this cabinet card photograph inscribed “Yours, J. B. SeBastian” offered lots of room to do just that.

The portrait, taken at the 17 W. Lexington Street studio of William Ashman (1863-1902), displays all the typical characteristics of a post-1900 card photograph: Oversized, simple black textured mount, understated advertising mark, plain background uncluttered by scenic backdrop or papier mache rocks and balustrades.

It didn’t take me long to figure out that I’d found yet another graduate of the University of Maryland Dental Department.

He was listed among the 1902 graduates of the program in the commencement announcement published in the journal Dental Cosmos. I quickly found census and directory listings in Baltimore from 1903 on for a James Burnite Sebastian, dentist, born in Delaware about 1875.

He had an undistinguished career as a dentist, eventually buying a two-story, two-bay row house at 3521 Greenmount Avenue, just east of Johns Hopkins University’s Homewood campus, in a now-faded neighborhood called Waverly. The ca. 1920 house stands today, virtually unchanged.

Dr. Sebastian served in the US Army Dental Corps Reserves. In these records, his origin was listed as Wilmington, Delaware, born 18 October 1875. His wife, Caroline, applied in 1947 for an Army-provided headstone in Lorraine Park Cemetery, Baltimore, on the basis of his service, using this date of birth.

Things became odder from there, however.

I couldn’t find anything on Dr. Sebastian earlier than 1902.

After trying a number of different possible spellings and variations, I found the surname Bastian. Thanks to the efforts of a family historian on Ancestry.com, I then found an obituary for a Delaware farmer named George M. Bastian (1832-1909) that listed a son, a Baltimore dentist named James Burnite Bastian.

But what the what??

James Burnite Bastian, or J. Burnite Bastian, was already three years old in the 1870 census–not in Wilmington, Delaware, but near a small rural peach-growing and peach-packing town named Felton, in Kent County, Delaware. He was born a good seven or eight years earlier than he’d claimed.

This same portrait, under the name James B. Bastian, appears on page 133 in the 1902 year book for the professional schools of the University of Maryland, Bones, Molars and Briefs.

Why the name change? And why fudge his age–something more usual with women of the period?

His family was a perfectly respectable one: farmer George M. Bastian rated a sketch of his life and family history in volume two of the Biographical and Genealogical History of the State of Delaware.

This history suggested a clue to James’ change of surname. The sketch mentioned that the family traced its roots to a vague “Count Sebastian” who had fled some sort of unspecified royal persecution in the 18th century.

They had settled in Lycoming County, Pennsylvania. George M. Bastian worked as a carpenter in Tioga County, Pa., eventually saving enough to buy a small farm in Delaware, where he and his wife, Rachel (Brion) Bastian (1836-1919), raised 10 children. George and Rachel Bastian are buried in Hopkins Cemetery, Felton, Delaware.

So James had reinvented himself in the city as a younger man with the legendary family surname, telling his classmates that he was 25 when in fact he was about 32 years old at the time he graduated from dental school. His signature on the back of this portrait connects the two parts of the surname with a capital “s” and a capital “b,” suggesting the self-consciousness of the change.

Vanity, thy name is SeBastian.

Rare Images of Antietam and the Photographers Who Took Them

Thanks to a Hagerstown pal, I’ve acquired and am devouring Steve Recker’s wonderful new book Rare Images of Antietam and the Photographers Who Took Them.

A Washington County native, Recker has researched the lives of all the major photographers who took photos of Antietam battlefield: Elias Marken Recher, David Bachrach, W. B. King, J. H. Wagoner, and more.

Recker carefully investigated how each photographer came to take their pictures, and has painstakingly worked to understand what is depicted in each. Also included are some rarely-seen images of the photographers themselves. Some of these cartes de visite and stereoviews have never been seen before.

And you can’t get it on Amazon–only at area bookstores and at Recker’s site, Virtual Antietam. So virtually run, don’t walk, to his site and grab a copy before they sell out.

Read a Q & A with the author on John Banks’ Civil War Blog.

Read an article about Recker and his career in the Hagerstown Daily Mail.