Sidewalk Photographers - the other side of the coin

Having read my previous article about sidewalk or pavement photographers, and the subsequent comment by Sheri, a regular reader sent me the following example which perhaps doesn't demonstrate the best qualities of the art. I had to laugh, even if I felt a little bad about doing so, and I can't resist reproducing it here, although the names will have to be witheld to protect the guilty parties - that is, me and that other fella.


This is from his email:

Sheri says "... I think that photos that have not been "posed" for make the best ones. I'm not too sure I agree with her. When I came across this one of ... circa 1930 in Lowestoft, it was so awful a reminder of those two relations that I decided to put it on Ebay for a Lowestoft PC collector. It was quickly snapped up !!

Enough said?

Sidewalk Photographers, Bournemouth & Great Yarmouth

Sheri Fenley, The Educated Genealogist, has this week written a very interesting and informative article about Sidewalk Photographers in her role as guest author over at the footnoteMaven's Shades of the Departed blog. I thought I would take this opportunity to show off a series of these candid shots from my own family collection. Sheri talks about the quite different character of the photos taken by sidewalk artists and, in particular, how the unstaged nature of the shots often resulted in "a captured moment in time unlike any other." I have noted another benefit of having these pictures in one's archives - they often include people who, for whatever reason, otherwise didn't have their portraits taken very often.


Uncle Hallam & Aunt Sarah, Dated in pencil, 10 June 1931
Postcard format (89 x 139mm) by Jackson's "Faces" (1921),
Great Yarmouth & Gorleston-on-Sea
, Collection of Barbara Ellison
My great-great-uncle Charles Hallam Payne (1870-1960) and his wife Sarah Emma née Parker (1870-1946) were well off enough to be able to retire from running the family grocery and off-licence at a relatively young age, in 1914. I doubt that this was due to the roaring success of the shop. It was more likely to have been the result of a steady and comfortable income produced as rent from houses inherited from his father Henry Payne, who died in 1907. Anyway, when they were in their late forties Hallam and Sarah handed the shop over to younger brother Fred Payne (1879-1946) and moved from St James Road in Normanton to Dale Cottage near Ingleby in South Derbyshire. (I have blogged previously about Dale Cottage here.)


Uncle Hallam
Inscribed in pencil, June 1932, Bournemouth
Unidentified photographer, Paper print (65 x 60mm)
Collection of Barbara Ellison
One of the things this steady income enabled them to do was to take regular holidays to the seaside, and the family photograph collections include an interesting series of photos of "Uncle" Hallam and "Aunt" Sarah (as they were known to my father and his sister) promenading in Bournemouth and Great Yarmouth in the 1930s.


Aunt Sarah & Uncle Hallam
Inscribed in pencil, at Bournemouth, June 1933
Postcard format (90 x 140mm), unidentified photographer
Collection of Barbara Ellison
One of them is of Hallam by himself - perhaps Sarah was indisposed that day - but most show Sarah as well, and since I have few others of her from this period, they are particularly valued.


Uncle Hallam & Aunt Sarah
No inscription, but dated September 1933, Bournemouth from others in sequence
Strip of two photos (each 70 x 63mm), Unidentified photographer
Collection of Barbara Ellison
The autumn of 1933 seems to have been a particularly active period for the street photographers of Bournemouth, as they seem to have caught Hallam and Sarah at least four times.


Uncle Hallam, Aunt Sarah & Christine Payne
Inscribed in pencil, Bournemouth, September 1933
Strip of two photos (each 89 x 67mm), Unidentified photographer
Collection of Barbara Ellison
Some of the shots show them walking with their niece Christine Payne (1910-2001), daughter of Hallam's younger brother Fred.

>
Uncle Hallam, Aunt Sarah & Christine Payne
Inscribed in pencil, Bournemouth, September 1933
Paper print (each 89 x 70mm), Unidentified photographer
Collection of Barbara Ellison


Uncle Hallam & Aunt Sarah, Inscribed in pencil, June 30/37
Postcard format (91 x 140mm)
by Jacksons "Faces" 1921, Great Yarmouth and Gorleston-on-Sea
In 1937 they were captured in the precise spot, and by the same photographer, where they had been holidaying six years earlier ...


Uncle Hallam & Aunt Sarah
Inscribed in pencil, July 5th 1938
Postcard format (90 x 140mm)
by Jacksons "Faces," Great Yarmouth and Gorleston-on-Sea
... and again the following year, although the location is rather blurred and not possible to identify with certainty.


Uncle Hallam & Fred Payne
Undated but probably in the late 1930s
by Lacey's Happy Snaps, Alum Chine, Bournemouth
The last photo in the sequence shows Uncle Hallam with his brother Fred (father of Christine, shown earlier) out walking at Bournemouth. It is unfortunately undated, although I believe it was probably taken in the late 1930s.

Dwight Minns Ware of Springfield & Boston, Massachusetts

Today's portrait is what is commonly referred to as an orphan and, to me at least, this means that it has become separated from any family ownership. There are several popular online photo archives which seek to reunite such orphan photographs with descendants or family members, of which perhaps the most well known is the catchily named DeadFred run by Joe Bott. I don't intend to duplicate the admirable efforts of such monumental enterprises, but I would occasionally like to record some of the "orphans" that come my way with a brief account on what I've been able to discover. If that does result in some family member eventually stumbling across this story through the wonders of Google, enabling me to reunite the photograph with the family, then so much the better.


This cabinet card showing a mother and young child was sent to me recently by a friend in Massachusetts, who came across it in a deceased estate sale, although she knew that the deceased had no connection with the subject of the photograph. The card mount identifies the photographer as Chauncey L. Moore of Republican Block, Springfield, Massachusetts.


Fortunately. the reverse has a clearly inscribed name, age and date, which makes researching the subjects a great deal easier.

Dwight Minns Ware.
14 months old.
1886

This is clearly the child in the photograph, and it seems fairly safe to assume that the woman is his mother. Although the exact date which the portrait was taken is not given, just the year, this is enough to provide an approximate date of birth for Dwight M. Ware as late 1884 or 1885. Without boring you with all of the intricate details of how I did it, I managed to find him very easily in the 1900 Census, then aged 14, and then, by going back and forwards in the census records, to outline his immediate family in some detail.


US Federal Census, 297 Walnut Avenue, Boston Ward 21, Suffolk, Massachusetts
4 June 1900
Image © National Archives and Records Administration & courtesy of Ancestry
In fact, this is one of those occasional cases that one comes across where an individual rather improbably appears twice in the same census! He is shown both living at home with his parents at 297 Walnut Avenue, Boston (Massachusetts) (above), and as a student attending Morristown School in Morris, New Jersey (below).


US Federal Census, Morristown School, Morris, New Jersey
9 June 1900
Image © National Archives and Records Administration & courtesy of Ancestry
I suspected that the census for the two locations may not have been done on exactly the same date, which might explain why both enumerators managed to catch him, so I checked the dates noted at the top of the enumerators' schedules. Ward 21 in Boston (MA) was enumerated on 4 June 1900, while that for Morris (NJ) one was done on 9 June 1900, so I suppose it is quite possible that he left for school some time in the five intervening days.

Dwight Minns Ware was born in September 1885, the third child (and first son) of Leonard and Laura Ware of Boston, Suffolk, Massachusetts. His father Leonard Ware (b. 1840) was one of ten children of an oil dealer Leonard Ware senior (1805-1888) and his wife Sarah Anne Minns (1816-1884), prominent citizens of Roxbury in Norfolk County.


John La Farge's Triptych stained-glass window, All Souls Unitarian Church, Roxbury, Massachusetts
Image © Richard E. Stevens and courtesy of the Unitarian Universalist Society of Amherst
The lives of Leonard and Sarah Anne Minns were commemmorated in the right-hand panel of a stained glass window in All Souls Unitarian Church of Roxbury, Massachusetts by the celebrated John La Farge, one time mentor of Louis Comfort Tiffany, commissioned by their children in 1889, shortly after their deaths. According to Kyle Cave the windows were were later removed from the Roxbury church, and in 1925 installed in the building that now houses the Unitarian Universalist Society of Amherst, where they remain today.

Leonard Ware junior married at the age of forty, on 7 January 1880, to a girl fifteen years younger than him, Laura Dwight Foote in her home town of Springfield, Hampden County. They settled in Boston, where Leonard worked as a fish oil merchant. In the 1900 Census, however, he described himself as an estate trustee and he had retired by 1910.


Obituary of Delia Dwight Foote, New York Times, 28 May 1897
Image © and courtesy of the New York Times Article Archive
Laura Dwight Ware, the presumed second subject of this portrait, was born on 7 September 1855, one of at least six children of Homer Foote (1810-1898) and Delia Dwight (1814-). Her father was a hardware merchant in Springfield and her mother a daughter of the "merchant prince" of Springfield, James Scott Dwight. Her mother's obituary, from the New York Times of 28 May 1897, gives some indication of the family's status in the Springfield community of the late 19th Century.

Delia Dwight Foot, wife of Homer Foot, a prominent public man of Springfield, Mass., died yesterday afternoon in Springfield in the eighty-fourth year of her age. She was the daughter of the late James Scott Dwight, one of the oldest residents of Springfield, and known as the "merchant prince," from the extensive mercantile business he conducted. In 1834 her marriage to Homer Foot, son of Adonijah Foot, Armorer of the National Armory of Springfield, took place. After her marriage she continued her residence in her native town, taking a leading part in the social life of the community. Homer Foot, her husband, was a wealthy hardware dealer, and at the time of Lincoln's first campaign in National politics was nominated for Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts against his will. he did not withdraw his name, however, and polled a vote of some 53,000, which was a strong showing, although not enough to elect.

Mrs. Foot was herself the last of a family of twelve children, and the mother of ten children, all of whom attended the golden wedding of their parents twelve years ago. One since died at the age of fifty years, and there remain six sons, three daughters, ten grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren of her decendants. Of the sons, for live in New York. They are Emerson Foot, Cleavland Foot, Sandford D. Foot, and James Dwight Foot. Funeral services and interment will be at Springfield.

The golden wedding anniversary celebration referred to above would have taken place in May 1884, some sixteen months before the birth of Mrs. Foot's grandson Dwight Minns Ware. Dwight's parents would probably have attended the event with his two older sisters Anna and Laura, then aged three and one respectively.


Chauncey L. Moore's studio at 441 Main Street, Springfield MA, c.1884
Engraving from King's Handbook of Springfield Massachusetts
It seems likely that Laura and Dwight Ware visited the studio of Chauncey L. Moore at 441 Main Street, Springfield on another such visit to the home of his maternal grandparents. If Dwight was 14 months old at the time, and we know that he was born in September 1885, then the visit probably took place in November or December 1886. The photographer was well established, as shown by this extract from King's Handbook of Springfield Massachusetts [Courtesy of the Internet Archive]:

Chauncey L. Moore has been a photographer in Springfield for twenty-eight years, and is now the longest-established photographer in Hampden County. His gallery at No. 441 Main Street, opposite Court Square, has been occupied by him for twenty consecutive years, and is familiar to all who ever have occasion to come to this city. Since he began here, Mr. Moore has photographed almost all the men, women, and children who have been noteworthily identified with this locality. Almost every Knight Templar, Mason, Odd Fellow, clergyman, public officer, and business man has sat for his picture in this gallery; and to-day there are here nearly thirty thousand negatives carefully put away, all registered and classified. Here, too, may be found the negatives of hundreds of buildings and views made during the score of years just passed.

The "Springfield Republican" Block, Springfield MA, c.1884
Engraving from King's Handbook of Springfield Massachusetts
The mount of the cabinet card shows Moore's studio at the "Republican Block" in Springfield. As shown in the engraving above, also from the Handbook, this was a four-story building housing The Springfield Republican newspaper, and perhaps it was additionally the location for a branch studio for Moore by 1886.

Although his family had lived in Massachusetts for generations, Dwight Ware moved away in his early twenties. The 1910 Census found him lodging in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where he was working as an electrical supplier's salesman. By 1920 he was living in Seattle, Washington, and that appears to be where he settled, marrying in the early 1920s and having two sons, William (1923-2002) and Leonard (b. 1928). The 1930 Census shows the family living at Sunrise Terrace, Lake Forest Park, north of Seattle.

Dwight M. Ware had a younger brother born in 1900, also named Leonard, who studied at Harvard University and became a newspaper journalist. He was a veteran of both World Wars, serving as a Lieutenant in the Naval Reserve intelligence in the 1940s. After the Second World War, he worked for the Boston Herald and was employed as a public affairs officer with the U.S. government.

That's about the limit to what I've been able to dig up about the immediate family - parents, grandparents, siblings, wife and children - of Dwight Minns Ware. If any reader can come up with further relevant material to add to the story, or clues to searching out any surviving descendants of his, please feel free to contact me, and I'll add it to the article in the form of a PS. Of course, if any descendant should happen to read this, I'd be happy to pass on the original photograph.

References

1870-1930 US Federal Census, National Archives and Records Administration, Indexed images from Ancestry.com
World War One Draft Registration Cards, Indexed images from Ancestry.com
International Genealogical Index (IGI), online at FamilySearch from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
New York Passenger Lists, 1820-1957, Online database from Ancestry.com
The New York Times Article Archive from The New York Times
United States Social Security Death Index, online at FamilySearch from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
Stained Glass Treasures: The stories behind the opalescent art of La Farge and Tiffany (PDF), on the web site of the Unitarian Universalist Society of Amherst
King's Handbook of Springfield Massachusetts, A Series of Monographs Historical and Descriptive, ed. Moses King, publ. 1884 by James D. Gill, available online at Archive.org

Hat tips from fellow family history bloggers

I've been rather remiss in not acknowledging my recent receipt of the Kreativ Blogger Award from two fellow genalogy bloggers. While I'm not really into the whole "award" thingy, I certainly welcome their generous thoughts and words, and I do appreciate the need for interraction and acknowledgement amongst ones peers. I trust they will forgive me for not helping to perpetuate the "chain reaction" aspect of the award - from what I can tell, it started off not too many months ago amongst a Scandinavian community of sewing/quilting bloggers - but I would like to express my gratitude for the kind hat tips from George and Jennifer.

George Geder's Genealogy-Photography-Restoration blog is a regular stopover of mine, as he is a photo-restoration artist and regularly features some wonderful old photographic portraits from his family collection, brimming with character. He also gives some insights into his experiences growing up in America, and offers many helpful suggestions on how to preserve memories from those still alive of our ancestors that have already passed away.

Jennifer of Our Future Rooted in Our Past concentrates on providing introductions to many useful web sites and databases around the world advantageous for use in your family history studies. Whilst browsing the site, I've come across reviews of several sites new to me, but which have proved relevant and helpful with my own research.

Many thanks to both of you!

J. Burton's Galerie Francaise of Aston Road, Birmingham

Angela Barrett recently sent me scans of four cartes de visite identified on the reverse as having been taken by J. Burton of Aston Road, Birmingham, wondering if this was the same photographer as the John Burton & Sons who operated a branch studio in Birmingham in the 1860s, and who I featured in a previous Photo-Sleuth article. The photographs were in a purchased leather bound, gilt-edged album with brass clasps identified as having belonged to one George Ernest Nind (born 1869).


The collection of cdvs is an interesting lot. Three of them depict two or three small children, possibly aged between one and four years, while the fourth shows a woman perhaps in her late twenties or early thirties. Three of the portraits have been taken in what appears to be a standard studio setting, with the same chair, painted backdrop, curtain and carpet. The remaining portrait is outdoors on the grass. Two of the pictures show a couple of the smaller children seated in a perambulator, or early pram.


I believe that the portraits were taken in the early to mid-1870s, say between c. 1871 and 1875, deduced from a combination of several factors, including the woman's hair, the style of her clothing and the "studio" setting, all of which are typical of this period.

I managed to find a birth record for George Ernest Nind in the GRO indexes transcribed and presented online by FreeBMD, showing a registration in the Registration District of Cleobury Mortimer, spanning the boundaries of the counties of Herefordshire, Shropshire and Worcestershire, in the March quarter of 1869. His family also appears in the 1871, 1881 and 1891 Censuses (available online by subscription from Ancestry), with which I was able to draw up the following family outline:

John Smith NIND b. 1840 Sedgeberrow WOR d. 1924 Worcester WOR m: 1864 Elizabeth Mary SHERRARD b. 1843 Bromley St Leonard, London MID d. 1899 Martley WOR
|- John Sherrard NIND b. c.Aug 1864 Cradley HER
|- Eleanor Mary NIND b. c.Nov 1865 Cradley HER
|- William Charles NIND b. c.Nov 1866 Cradley HER
|- Frederic Augustus NIND b. c.Nov 1867 Cradley HER
|- George Ernest NIND b. c.Feb 1869 Kinlet SAL
|- Henry Edward NIND b. c.Nov 1869 Kinlet SAL
|- Elizabeth Ellen NIND b. c.Nov 1870 Kinlet SAL
|- Florence Emily NIND b. c.Feb 1872 Kinlet SAL
|- Percy NIND b. c.1873 Kinlet SAL
|- Edmund Robert NIND b. c.Aug 1874 St John Worcester WOR
|- Archibald Ralph NIND b. c.Nov 1877 St John Worcester WOR
|- Francis (Frank) Horace NIND b. c.Aug 1879 St John Worcester WOR
|- Son NIND b. c.1881 St John Worcester WOR
|- Marguerite Louise NIND b. c.Nov 1883 St John Worcester WOR
|- Daughter NIND b. c.1887 St John Worcester WOR

George Nind was one of fifteen children of a farmer and haulier/contractor John Smith Nind (1840-1924) and his wife Elizabeth Mary née Sherrard (1843-1899). They lived in Cradley, Herefordshire (1864-1867), Kinlet, Shropshire (1869-1873) and Worcester, Worcestershire (1875-1891). If these portraits depict members of this family group, and that is by no means certain, then there are a large number of children to choose from.


One of Angela's correspondents had suggested that the perambulator might have been a photographer's prop, and probably not affordable to the ordinary family. However, I think it more likely to have belonged to the family who were photographed. I found an engraving of a permabulator of very similar design from this period on the Smithsonian Institution Libraries web site and the following reference from the book, A Manual of Domestic Economy by John Henry Walsh, published in 1874 [the full text of this book is available online at Google Books]:

The Perambulator is one of the most extraordinary investions of the day, and chiefly from its extreme simplicity. Any one who has attempted to draw the old-fashioned child's carriage will have felt its weight and the disagreeable nature of the duty; and yet, until within the last quarter of a century, although very nearly the same principle had been adopted for Bath chairs during more than a century, no one thought of extending it to that for the child. They are now made so extensively, and at so low a rate, that they may be procured in every village; but they are not always manufactured in the best possible way.

The suggestion is that by the second half of the Eighteenth Century permabulators had indeed become affordable to many families.


A fifth carte de visite with a view of an unidentified church, also by J. Burton of Aston Road, was pasted on top of the frontispiece of the album.


The firm of John Burton & Sons operated a branch studio on the corner of New Street and Bennett's Hill in central Birmingham from 1862 until 1866. The card mount above is from this period, although probably taken at the Derby branch. From what I can tell, they never had a branch on Aston Road, Birmingham, and for this reason, I think it unlikely that these portraits were by the rather more famous Burton firm which had its origins in Leicester, as they appear to have been taken several years after the closure of the New Street branch.


The reverse of the card mount used for all five photographs, shown above, is very interesting. It uses a style of design which became popular in the early 1870s, as displayed in Roger Vaughan's excellent and very useful analysis of designs through the decades. However, it is also very similar to the design which had been used some years earlier by Burton & Sons when at their Birmingham studio. It may be that the "Aston Road" Burton was trying to get some spin-off of trade from this association.


I have as yet been unable to find any details of another "J. Burton" operating as a photographer in Aston or Birmingham, but have little doubt of his existence since, apart from your five examples, I was able to find several others on the web. Two of these are displayed in Roger Vaughan's large collection of Victorian cartes de visite. They are reproduced above by Roger's kind permission. The portrait of the two girls has the same chair, back wall, curtain and carpet as seen in the previous portraits, although the painted backdrop has changed, and there is an additional circular side table, upon which one girl rests her right elbow. Roger believes the vignetted portrait of the boy may be a copy of another photograph. Unfortunately neither are dated or have further details of the subjects or the studio, but all have an identical card mount design to Angela's, and appear to date from approximately the same time period, i.e. the early to mid-1870s.


I also found this carte de visite view of a church by J. Burton of Aston Road posted in a thread entitled "Identifying a church" by Colin Baker on the Birmingham History Forum, later identified as the Holy Trinity church, located on the corner of Trinity and Birchfield Roads in Aston (Satellite view of location from GoogleMaps).

There are a several pointers which lead me to think that this "J. Burton" may have been something of an itinerant, travelling or fairground practitioner, in spite of - or perhaps even because of - the "Aston Road" address shown on his printed card mount. The photographer has not taken a great deal of trouble over his "studio" background, demonstrating some inexperience. Although there are three parts to it, the right-hand edge of the painted backdrop is rather badly tacked onto the plain "wooden" wall. In a more established studio, I would have expected this join to have been hidden by some sort of strip to disguise it, and at least present the illusion of a doorway to an outside view. In one of the portraits, there is a significant gap between the carpet and the "skirting board." The presence of the skirting board, presumably fixed to a solid wall of some sort, rather than another canvas sheet, suggests to me that it was at least taken indoors, although probably in a photographer's van.


The subject of the painted backdrop interests me even more, as it appears to depict a fairground tent/stall. A woman and child are looking at the wares on display, while a seated woman points to items on the table. Some pots and pans are hanging at the front of the tent and I think I can see some bottles on the table. The writing on the side of the tent reads, "JOUETS D'ENF..." which has been interpreted by one of Angela's correspondents (the Curator of Costume at the Victoria & Albert Museum of Childhood) as Jouets d'Enfants or "children's toys". This illustration of what may be a scene at a carnival or fair strongly suggests to me that the photographer himself might be a frequenter of such events.

In Pauline Gashinski's notes about showman Randall Williams on her British Fairground Ancestors web site, she states:

"When new regulations prohibited the showmen from exhibiting at Birmingham’s Onion Fair, Randall was instrumental in establishing a new fair at Aston on the border of Birmingham on some waste land known as 'The Old Pleck'. Randall took on the role as lessee of the new venue for a number of years - calling it [the] 'Birmingham Fair'."

She includes the following advertisement from The Birmingham Gazette from 1875:

"Birmingham Pleasure Fair
Aston Road
On Thursday, Friday and Saturday next
30th September, 1st and 2nd October.
Applications for ground to Randall Williams
18 Summer Street, Birmingham
Fireworks on Thursday Evening"

On the same web page, in a report from The Era dated 11 November 1893, there is a mention of a J. Burton, one of a group of van-dwellers and other travellers attending a meeting with Randall Williams at the Rotherham Statutes Fair. While it may be a simple coincidence, it seems quite possible that this J. Burton was the same person who had operated a travelling photographic booth in the early to mid-1870s.


All of this points to the five photographs from Angela's album having been taken by a travelling photographer in the early to mid-1870s, possibly not far from their home. During the period in question they moved from Kinlet in Shropshire to Henwick Road in the parish of St John-in-Bedwardine, Worcester, and it seems likely that the church shown in the fifth carte de visite (detail above) might be the parish church from one of these two places.


Parish Church, St John-in-Bewardine, Worcester, Worcestershire
Image © and courtesy of Sally Lloyd
It looks similar, but not identical, to the Parish church of St John-in-Bewardine, Worcester [Satellite image from Google Maps], shown in this sample from a series of recent photographs by Sally Lloyd on Flickr. I wondered whether perhaps there was some significant rebuilding in the late 19th Century, but I may be completely off track.


Parish Church, St John the Baptist, Kinlet, Shropshire
Image © Gillian Palmer and courtesy of William LaMartin
The parish church of St John the Baptist at Kinlet has a similar crenellated tower, but quite a few significant differences which, I think, rule it out completely.

My investigations into the identity of this church are rather inconclusive, so I am hoping that some readers will be able to help in due course. Likewise, I'm also hoping that further sightings of, and perhaps portraits by, J. Burton of Aston Road will surface in due course. Please don't hesitate to get in touch if you can help.