Sepia Saturday 288: The Changing Face of a Market Town

This week's Sepia Saturday theme image of a buther's shopfront is a reminder, if we ever needed one, of now much our townscapes have changed in the last century, and by that I'm referring not just to the buildings themselves but also the nature of the window displays and manner of presenting wares to the public. Attractive as they are to the modern tourist, most of the quaint old historic villages that one sees regularly in guide books and on the television bear little resemblance to how they looked in Victorian times. There are some exceptions, however, and some time fellow Sepian Nigel Aspdin has kindly dropped whatever he was doing, hopped on the bus at a moments notice, and spent a rainy morning in Ashbourne (Derbyshire) taking some "now" photos for me.


Green Man Hotel. Ashbourne. W.4286
Lithographic print of photograph by unknown photographer
Published by Louis B. Twells, Ashbourne, probably c.1885-1895
Image © and collection of Brett Payne
Consider this image of the Green Man and Black's Head Royal Hotel in the medieval market town of Ashbourne in the Derbyshire Dales, which was published by photographer Louis B. Twells, probably in the mid-1880s to early 1890s. A crowd of onlookers has assembled in the archway of the inn's carriage entrance, either to provide a send off for the distinguished looking family departing in the horse-drawn carriage, or at the photographer's bidding to provide some life in his scene. Plenty of human interest there certainly is in this well constructed and executed view, with a gaggle of children lurking on the street corner, a couple of erstwhile shoppers walking down the pavment at far left, perhaps having just visited Henry Hood & Son's tailors and gentleman's outfitters shop next door to the Green Man.


Green Man Hotel, St John Street, Ashbourne, 13 July 2015
Image © and courtesy of Nigel Aspdin
Mrs. Fanny Wallis was proprietress of the Green Man and Black's Head Commercial and Family Hotel, Posting House & Inland Revenue Office (to quote its full title as given in trade directories of the time) in St John Street, Ashbourne from the death of her husband Robert Wallis in 1871 until her own death in 1898. Little appears to have been done to the exterior since then, and the outfitter's next door is somewhat surprisingly still selling clothing. They have, however, cleaned up the horse droppings on the road.


Market Square. Ashbourne. W.4285
Lithographic print of photograph by unknown photographer
Published by Louis B. Twells, Ashbourne, probably c.1885-1895
Image © and collection of Brett Payne
Nigel's great-grandfather William Barnes had an ironmonger's shop fronting onto Market Place, and used the full extent of the open area to display his wares, presumably by arrangement with the authorities to avoid a fine for obstructing the pavement. His sign in the middle of the square is just visible near the right hand edge of this scene, partly obscuring the shop front of George Hill & Company, boot and shoe manufacturers. The building to the left of this was occupied by the Conservative Club (John Rowland, secretary). The only other sign clearly legible, and reading only "Bradley," is affixed to a building at middle left, actually situated on St John Street. This was, according to the 1891 edition of Kelly's Trade Directory, Edwin Sylvester Bradley, chemist and druggist. The directory also provides the following:

A handsome monument and fountain was erected in the market place in 1873, by public subscription, in memory of the late Francis Wright esq. of Osmaston Manor, for his valuable services to the town and neighbourhood.

Market Square, Ashbourne, 13 July 2015
Image © and courtesy of Nigel Aspdin
The monument is still there, although by now somewhat darker than the surroundings, and William Barnes' agricultural implements have been replaced, inveitably, by motor vehicles. Otherwise, the general outline of buildings and skyline remain almost completely unchanged, although I did notice that the top spike is missing from a finial on a building facade at the far left, perhaps knocked off by an over-exuberant spectator or player during one of Ashbourne's annual Royal Shrovetide Tuesday Football games. The then Prince of Wales (future Kind Edward VIII) received a bloody nose during the 1928 match.


Market Square, Ashbourne, 13 July 2015
Image © and courtesy of Nigel Aspdin
William Barnes' shop front is not visible in the lithographic view, but can be seen in Nigel's recent photo, now occupied by the Lighthouse charity shop and Spar and looking rather sad, in my view.


Church Street. Ashbourne. W.2669
Lithographic print of photograph by unknown photographer
Published by Louis B. Twells, Ashbourne, probably c.1885-1895
Image © and collection of Brett Payne
In this view of Church Street, which becomes St John Street further down in the vicinity of The Green Man, the streetscape is full of people standing chatting outside shops and, in the case of several blurred figures, walking along the pavement. I've been unable to decipher the name of the shop outside which the three young men are loitering at left, but the shop window looks to be full of bottles. On the right hand side of the street, the wrought iron sign for the White Hart Hotel (Mrs Elizabeth Burton, proprietor) is just visible, although the writing not legible.


Church Street, Ashbourne, 13 July 2015
Image © and courtesy of Nigel Aspdin
The modern day bunting-bedecked view shows the bottle shop at left to be occupied by Fidler Taylor, estate agents, valuers, surveyors and auctioneers; the bottles have gone. There is no longer and parking for vehicles at the kerb, whether horse-drawn or motorised, but there are roughly the same number of pedestrians and the White Hart Hotel now offers Sky Sports Live - I shan't be going in there any time soon.


Grammar School. Ashbourne. W.4284
Lithographic print of photograph by unknown photographer
Published by Louis B. Twells, Ashbourne, probably c.1885-1895
Image © and collection of Brett Payne
Ashbourne's Queen Elizabeth Grammar School looked somewhat dilapidated, perhaps even slightly ghostly, in the late nineteenth century. It was already three hundred years old, and within a couple of decades the teaching programme had moved to a new location on Green Road.


Old Grammar School, Church Street, Ashbourne, 13 July 2015
Image © and courtesy of Nigel Aspdin
The Old Grammar School building has been patched up a little in the ensuing 125 years or so, currently being used as private dwellings, and I notice that it has a "For Sale" sign hanging outside.


Ashbourne Church & Grammar School. 9892. G.W.W.
Lithographic print of photograph by unknown photographer
Published by George Washington Wilson, probably c.1885-1895
Image © and collection of Brett Payne
Diagonally opposite the Old Grammar School on Church Street is the gateway to the Parish Church of St Oswald:

The church of St. Oswald, King and Martyr ... dedicated in 1241 ... is a cruciform building, consisting of chancel, clerestoried nave, south aisle, transept, north and south porches and a central tower, with lofty octagonal spire, 212 feet in height, ribbed with ball flower ornaments and pierced with twenty dormer lights in five tiers of four each; this spire, a work of great beauty and remarkable lightness, is called the "Pride of the Peak," and was restored in 1873.

Ashbourne Church. 3918. G.W.W.
Lithographic print of photograph by unknown photographer
Published by George Washington Wilson, probably c.1885-1895
Image © and collection of Brett Payne
A slightly less obstructed and more rural view of the same church but from over the fields to the south was published by the Scottish publisher G.W. Wilson.


Ashbourne Church from the South, 13 July 2015
Image © and courtesy of Nigel Aspdin

Ashbourne Hall. 20,907. G.W.W.
Lithographic print of photograph by unknown photographer
Published by George Washington Wilson, probably c.1885-1895
Image © and collection of Brett Payne
Ashbourne Hall was originally built "somewhat in the style of a French chateau and has still some traces of antiquity."


Ashbourne Hall, 13 July 2015
Image © and courtesy of Nigel Aspdin
The outlying buildings of Ashbourne have not fared so well, this one appearing to have suffered from partial decapitation.


A.R. Bentley, Groceries & Provisions, Ashbourne shop front, 13 July 2015
Image © and courtesy of Nigel Aspdin
Unfortunately I don't have any old photographs of Ashbourne's shopfronts to share with you, but I will include a couple that Nigel took the other day to give you an idea of how it feels to shop in Ashbourne today. Bentley's corner shop probably retains much of the flavour, and perhaps little of the charm, that it had when it first opened in 1973.


Vacant premises, Ashbourne shop front, 13 July 2015
Image © and courtesy of Nigel Aspdin
We have few clues as to what this tenant offered for sale. All I can say now is that they've moved on, hopefully to greener pastures.


Ashbourne shop front, 13 July 2015
Image © and courtesy of Nigel Aspdin
This purveyor of "Home Cooked Meats" and "English & Continental Cheeses" advertising in the windows of perhaps mostly an authentic shop front caters to a boutique market which doesn't appear to be in abundance on this overcast, showery day,


Nigel's, Top Quality Butcher, Ashbourne shop front, 13 July 2015
Image © and courtesy of Nigel Aspdin
Nigel (not my friend Nigel, but another one) may have top quality meat for sale, but I think he needs to brush up on his window dressing skills. A couple of plastic models of a beef and a dairy cow aren't enough to replace the lavish display that his predecessors might have had a century earlier.


J. Morgan's butcher's shop, Broad St, Waterford, Ireland, 25 Feb 1916
Image courtesy of National Library of Ireland's Flickr Commons Collection

Road distance marker, Ashbourne, 13 July 2015
Image © and courtesy of Nigel Aspdin
And if you're interested in where Ashbourne is, I can tell you exactly: 139 miles from London, 45 miles from Manchester, and 13 miles from Derby. Whether you're headed to London, Manchester or Timbuktu, please take a moment to stop off and visit the other Saturday Sepians on the way.

Sepia Saturday 287: Picturing the Shape of an Immigrant Family

Last week I introduced the Henschel and Gifford families, likely original owners of an old photo album that came into my possession a few years ago. This week's Sepia Saturday theme image suggests group portraits, and is convenient because I will follow on with the cabinet portrait of an unidentified group of young women that I used last week.


Cabinet portrait of unidentified group of women, c.1889-1893
Image © and collection of Brett Payne
As explained in more detail in the previous article, these young women are as yet unidentified and we can't even be sure who the woman at the centre of the group, marked with an arrow pencilled in the lower margin, might be. What we can say with a fair degree of certainty, due to a pencilled notation on the back of the card mount, is that either Herbert Henry Henschel (1888-1982) or his wife Agnes Hammersley née Gifford (1888-1967) of Cleveland, Ohio ordered an vignetted enlargement of this woman's portrait, probably between 1907 and 1913. It seems likely that the subject of the vignette was Agnes's mother Ellen (Nellie) Gifford née Slater, who emigrated from England to the United States with her husband Frederick (Fred) Thomas Gifford (1862-1932) and infant daughter in February 1893.


Unidentified girl, taken c. 1900-1903
Carte de visite by R. Clarenbernie, 46 Liverpool Rd, Stoke-on-Trent
Images © and collection of Brett Payne
The preponderance of portraits in the album taken by studio photographers in Staffordshire (9) and Derbyshire (10) (see geographical distribution here), even taken after the Gifford family's emigration to Cleveland in 1893, points to the existence of a wider family network, some of whom may have remained in England. There are two further carte de visite portraits in the album which have inscriptions on the reverse, the first of which is clearly handwritten in black ink, "Fred & Nellie." Jones (1994) handily lists the photographer R. Clarenbernie working at this address in Stoke-on-Trent only from 1900 to 1903, providing us with a good date estimate for the portrait of a young girl.


Three unidentified children, taken c. 1898-1901
Carte de visite by Thomas Frost, Victoria Studio, 26½ St Peter's St, Derby
Images © and collection of Brett Payne
The second portrait of three pre-teen children (probably a girl and two younger brothers, judging by their facial similarities) was taken by Derby photographer Thomas Frost, whom I know from my own research was active at that address from c.1896 to 1903. The card format (in particular the words, "late with Gibson & Son") indicate that it was probably used prior to c. 1901, while the clothing (specifically the girl's sleeves and the boys' lace collars) suggest a date of very late 1890s or early 1900s. In this case, the inscription reads, "for Nellie with best wishes."

Although pretty meaningless until the recent discovery of the Henschel-Gifford family connection with the album, these two inscriptions now tell us a great deal, because we can be certain that they were taken in England several years after Fred and Nellie had departed for North America. In other words, they must have been sent to them by family back in the old country, and it appears likely that the subjects were nieces and nephews, in other words children of siblings of either Fred or Nellie Gifford. The existence of both photographs in this album also strongly suggests that the album may at one time have been owned by Fred and Nellie Gifford.


James Gifford (1829-1902) and Ann née Hammersley (1832-1926)
From the Ancestry.com family tree & collection of Frank Bates
So off I went to Ancestry.com to look for Fred and Nellie's respective families, tracing them through census, GRO, parish and other records to build up a detailed picture of their immediate families, and in particular to determine what happen to their parents and siblings. I found several family trees uploaded and made publicly available by others, some of whom are clearly related, which made my job a lot quicker and easier. I am particularly indebted to the research done by Frank Bates of Eastlake, Ohio, who is descended from Fred's sister Elizabeth Matilda Gifford (1869-1952). Of special interest are the photographs of Fred Gifford's parents, James Gifford (1829-1902) and Ann née Hammersley (1832-1926), which I have displayed above.


Ann Gifford née Hammersley, Frank Bates and "Butch," taken c. 1909
Cabinet card by Chesnutt Bros (Lewis H & Andrew J), 318 Euclid Ave, Cleveland, Ohio
From the Ancestry.com family tree & collection of Frank Bates
James Gifford married Ann Hammersley at Stoke-on-Trent in 1853, where they lived and had eight children, four boys and four girls. Their last child Agnes Hammersley Gifford was born in late 1879 and died before her third birthday. All seven of their remaining children married, and six of those couples in due course had children of their own. In the mid-1880s, after most of their children had left home, the Giffords moved to Denbigh, a small town in North Wales. James Gifford died in Denbigh in June 1902, and in 1905 his widow crossed the Atlantic to live with her daughter and son-in-law, which is presumably where the portrait with her grandson and his dog (above) was taken.


Unidentified middle-aged couple, c. 1879-1882
Cabinet card by W.H. Smith of Crickhowell, Breconshire, Wales
Image © and collection of Brett Payne
It didn't take much time to find a portrait in the album depicting a middle-aged couple who look very much like younger versions of James and Ann Gifford. Judging by the tight sleeves of the woman's dress, with a large full puff at the top sitting high on the shoulders, I estimate this portrait to have been taken in the very late 1870s or early 1880s (Blum, 1974). They would have been in their early forties at the time, a few years before they moved permanently to live in Denbigh.


Unidentified middle-aged man, c. 1889-1891
Cabinet card by James Murray, Commerce Street, Longton
Image © and collection of Brett Payne
This portrait, taken roughly a decade later in Longton (Staffordshire), also appears to be of James Gifford, although his hair is by now completely white.


Three unidentified women, c. 1885-1888
Carte de visite by C.F. Wiggins, Imperial Studio, 27 Talbot Rd, Blackpool
Image © and collection of Brett Payne
There is also a carte de visite portrait of one older and two younger women, taken in Blackpool in the mid- to late 1880s. The older woman looks very similar, in both facial features and hairstyle, to the black-and-white portrait of Ann Gifford above. The two younger women in the portrait are most likely her daughters, but which ones? For an answer to this question, it is necessary to widen our view across the whole Gifford family, and this is where it starts to get difficult because of the number of children they had.
- James Gifford (1853-) married Mary Worrall in 1875
- William Edgerton Gifford (1856-1940) married Mary Ann Haywood in 1877
- Frederick Thomas Gifford (1862-1932) married Ellen Slater in 1887
- Mary Ann Gifford (1864-) married Alfred Maiden in 1887
- Charles Gifford (1867-1922) married Jane Grocott in 1892
- Elizabeth Matilda Gifford (1869-1952) married George Bates in 1892
- Cecilia Gifford (1875-1974) married Fred George Ham in 1899


Gifford Geographical Family Tree, Click to enlarge
Image © 2015 Brett Payne
The need to be able to visualize the locations of the various branches of the Gifford family through time has led me to design a novel type of family tree, which attempts provide a graphical solution to a problem that I have experienced many times when attempting to research family photo albums. This is its first airing, and since it is really just a prototype, I'll hope you'll bear with me if there are a few hiccups and inconsistencies. To be able to see the full version image at the same time as reading my explanation, I suggest that readers right click with their mouse button on the image above, choose to "open in a new window," and then adjust the size of the browser windows accordingly so you can see both at the same time, assuming your screen is big enough.

Each column on the chart represents a different Gifford family group, with the "first" generation of James and Ann Gifford on the far left, then the seven children of the second generation, and finally Agnes Gifford & Herbert Henschel, who were in the third generation. The vertical axis represents time, and extends from 1850 to 1960, with the decades marked by horizontal rules.

Individuals are marked on the chart by a series of coloured dots (blue for males, red for females, naturally) connected with lines from their birth date, through marriage (where a male and female line will merge), having children (slightly smaller dots) until their death (marked by a small cross). Underlying the family lines are colour fills representing the locations where they were living at the time, for example pale green for Staffordshire (England), pale purple for Ohio (United States), etc. The key to these colours is at the base of the chart.


Portraits taken in Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, c. 1900-1903 (left)
and Derby, Derbyshire, c. 1898-1901 (right)
Images © and collection of Brett Payne
The intention, therefore, is that if the location and approximate date of a photographic portrait are known, and the age(s) of the subject(s) can be roughly estimated, then the chart can be used to determine which members of the family were living in the right place at the right time, and were the right age, to be candidates for the portrait.

Perhaps readers would like to try their hand at doing this for themselves with the two cartes de visites shown above, to see if (a) the chart works as intended, and (b) whether you come up with the same candidates as I have? In other words, if we assume that these children are daughters and sons of one of Fred Gifford's siblings, which second generation family do they belong to? I'd be very grateful if you'd leave your deductions in the comment box below. If you find the chart too difficult to understand, have some questions or suggestions for improvements, or indeed any other comments, I'd likewise be pleased to hear from you.

Post Script 14 July 2015

These are my interpretations of who the subjects of the two carte de visite portraits might be:

(1) Clarnbernie portrait of girl with a wall-eye
The girls looks to be aged around 8-10 years, which implies a birth date of c. 1890-1895 if my date estimate for the portrait is correct. Three of the second generation Gifford families were living in Staffordshire during this period: James & Mary Gifford, William & Mary Ann Gifford and Charles & Jane Gifford. All three had daughters, but only Charles & Jane had a daughter of the right age. She was Agnes Annie Gifford born in 1892 at Stoke-on-Trent.

(2) Frost portrait of three children
The only family living in Derby around the turn of the century was Alfred and Mary Ann Maiden, who had three children: Florence Amelia Maiden, born in 1890 and therefore aged c. 8-11, Alfred James Maiden, born in 1891 and hence aged c. 7-10, and Harry Maiden, born in 1896 and aged 2-5.

References

Alderman, Mari (2006) Victorian Professional Photographers in Wales, 1850-1925, publ. online by GENUKI.

Blum, Stella (1974) Victorian Fashions & Costumes from Harper's Bazaar, 1867-1898, New York: Dover Publications, 294p.

Harbach, Mike (2014) Staffordshire Photographers Index, publ. online by GENUKI>

Jones, Gillian A. (1994) Professional Photographers in North Staffordshire, 1850-1940, The PhotoHistorian, No. 103 (Winter 1994), Royal Photographic Society Historical Group.

Jones, Gillian A. (nd) Professional Photographers in South Staffordshire, 1850-1940, The PhotoHistorian, No. 105, Royal Photographic Society Historical Group.

Jones, Gillian (2004) Lancashire Professional Photographers, 1840-1940, Watford: PhotoResearch, 203p.

Sepia Saturday 286: The Importance of Deciphering a Hasty Scrawl

I spend lot of time trying to decipher almost illegible scrawls inscribed on the back of old photographs, often the only clue to the subject matter of the image on the front. Quite frequently, it comes down to whether a flick of the pen was the start of a new letter or part of the previous one. There's not much point in dwelling on the matter of whether a little more care could have been taken at the time. You just get on with it and work with what you have.


Six years ago a tattered and threadbare velvet-covered album of family photographs came into my possession, having originally been purchased at a yard sale in eastern Pennsylvania. Jack Armstrong had intended to research it himself, but after several years the almost total lack of any clues left its origins as mysterious as when he bought it.

A number of the portraits in the album had been taken by studios in Derbyshire (England) - hence my interest - but all provenance had been lost, and clues to the identity of the subjects were almost completely non-existent. I subsequently used the album as a photo-archival exercise, with several articles published here on the standard photographing, scanning and documentation procedures that I use for such projects (here, here and here). I also used a photograph from the album as the introductory image for a Sepia Saturday article (SS 170) that I wrote about gamekeepers.


Geographical distribution of photographs (click image to enlarge)
In addition to scanning and documenting the collection, I also did some geographical analysis of the studios at which the portraits were taken. As shown in the pie chart above most of the 55 portraits were taken in the United Kingdom, and of those the majority came from Derbyshire (10) and Staffordshire (9). In the United States the bulk of the portraits were taken in Cleveland, Ohio (8).

My initial analysis suggested, therefore, that the family which owned the album may have emigrated from one of several locations in Staffordshire or Derbyshire to Cleveland, Ohio at some time within the date range of the portraits in the album.


Dates of portrait sittings (click image to enlarge)
N.B. 5-yr moving average of mid-points of date estimates
I then constructed a graph showing the frequency of portrait sittings over time, using five year moving averages of the mid-points of the estimated date ranges. I realise that the logic and methodology of using five-year moving averages to represent date range estimates is a bit dodgy, to say the least, and I have since revised my date estimates for several photos, but I hoped that this would smooth out the graphs and at least give an an overall visual impression of the main periods that the images were taken, which it does fairly well.

The graph (or chart, if you prefer) demonstrates that the US photos start to appear in the early 1880s, while from the early 1890s onwards, the preponderance of UK photos diminishes markedly. To me this suggests an immigration date range from the early 1880s to the early 1890s. It is conceivable that one part of the family immigrated to the US in the early 1880s, while a second part arrived in the early 1890s. This could have been a husband and wife's family arriving at different times, or indeed something far more complicated.


Cabinet portrait of unidentified group of women, c.1889-1893
Image © and collection of Brett Payne
There are very few inscriptions on the photographs, and none at all on the album pages. The only one that appears to offer any immediate clues to the identity of the subjects is on the back of a cabinet portrait of a large group of ten women taken in the very late 1880s or early 1890s by a professional, if somewhat hastily put together, studio. It has been mounted onto a standard cabinet card mount with no photographer's name, although the presence of a royal seal in the scroll work design strongly implies a United Kingdom origin.


Inscription on reverse of cabinet card mount
The text, handwritten in pencil, appears to read as follows:

H.H. Henschel
1223 E 111th St
10 x 12 Sep vig

The first line is almost certainly a name, H.H. Henschel or conceivably "Herschel," and is probably the client's name, not necessarily that of the subject. The second line, I think, comprises an address, (number) 1223 East 111th Street, while the third I have deciphered as instructions for a copy enlargement of the portrait to be made, 10" x 12" Sepia vignette. At the edge of the front of the card mount is a small arrow marked in pen or pencil indicating that the central figure is the one which is to be enlarged.

The surname appears to be of Germanic origin, and the address is in a style more likely to have originated in the United States than in the United Kingdom. I came to the conclusion, therefore, that although the original portrait had been taken somewhere in the UK, the vignetted portrait enlargement was requested by someone who no longer had access to the original studio negatives. In other words, it may have been written, and therefore the enlargement made, some years after the original portrait had been taken. It could have been a simple framed vignette or a much more elaborate glazed and framed, colourised portrait, examples of which I have posted here and, with my Tauranga Historical Society hat on, here.


Census enumeration for 1221 E 111th St, Cleveland City, 23 Apr 1910
Image © The National Archives & courtesy of Ancestry.com
Given that Cleveland, Ohio features so prominently in the US portraits, I searched for the surname "Henschel" in census records for that city. Almost immediately I came up with the following spectacular discovery at 1221 East 111th Street, Cleveland in 1910:

Gifford Frederick / Head / 48 / Widr / b Eng / Imm 1892 / China Artist
Gifford Frederick J / Son / 10 / S / b OH
Henschel Herbert / SoninLaw / 23 / M 2y / b OH / Auto Co. Electrician
Henschel Agnes H / Dau / 22 / M 2y / b Eng
Henschel Herbert G / GdSon / 11m / S / b OH

Here was a family that fitted the bill, having arrived in the United States in 1892, settled in Cleveland, with a daughter who married Herbert Henschel in about 1908, and were living at in East 111th Street in 1910 - although at number 1221 instead of 1223. It seemed almost too good to be true but, as I investigated the family further through census records and the discovery of online family trees, pieces continued to fall into place.


The Henschel family arrived on S.S. Cimbria in 1881
Image courtesy of Ancestry.com
Wilhelm (William) Henschel and his family emigrated from Berlin, Prussia in 1881. After a fifteen day voyage across the North Atlantic on board the Hamburg America Line steamship Cimbria, his wife Wilhelmina (Minnie) and three children arrived in New York on 6 October and joined William in Cleveland, Ohio.


Garfield Monument, Cleveland, Ohio, taken c. May 1890
Cabinet card by unknown photographer
Image © and collection of Brett Payne
Having arrived in the United States only a few weeks after the assassination of President Garfield, whose home town was Cleveland, it was natural that when a monument to him was unveiled at the Lake View Cemetery in Cleveland and dedicated in May 1890, the Henschel family should preserve a keepsake of such an historic occasion in their family album.


Unidentified child in christening gown, c.1889-1892
Cabinet card by J.M. Tuttle, 1672 St Clair St, Cleveland, Ohio
Image © and collection of Brett Payne
In the mean time, the Henschel family had grown. A fourth son William was born in September 1884 and a fifth Herbert Henry Henschel on 24 June 1888, nearly seven years after settling in Cleveland. Their only daughter Mamie arrived in July 1891. This baby in a christening gown could be either Herbert Henry or Mamie.


Unidentified woman, taken c.1891-1892 (click images to enlarge)
Cabinet cards by Rynald H. Krumhar, 225 Superior St, Cleveland, Ohio
Image © and collection of Brett Payne
The two portraits of a middle-aged woman with a very close-fitting hair style and almost as severe an expression were taken by Rynald H. Krumhar who, according to Artists in Ohio, 1787-1900: A Biographical Dictionary, operated a studio in Cleveland on his own in 1891 and 1892 before teaming up with his brother Robert F. Krumhar between 1892 and 1895. Minnie Henschel (1848-) was in her early forties at the time these two portaits were taken, and I believe must be the prime candidate.


Unidentified man, taken c. 1887-1892
Cabinet card by Copeland, 588 Pearl Street, Cleveland, Ohio
Image © and collection of Brett Payne
A head and shoulders vignetted portrait of a similarly aged gentleman with a luxuriant moustache and goatee may have been taken slightly earlier. I don't have dates of operation of the Cleveland photographer Copeland, but from the style of mount, portrait and clothing I suspect it dates to the late 1880s or early 1890s. William Henschel Sr. (1850-) is the obvious choice here, as he too would have been about 40 years old.


Unidentified young man, taken c. 1894-1897
Cabinet card by Pifer & Becker Photo-Palace, Wilshire Building, 94-100 Superior St, Cleveland, Ohio
Image © and collection of Brett Payne
This young man appears to be aged in his late teens, and probably visited Pifer & Becker's Photo-Palace studio in the mid-1890s. I suspect that it is one of Herbert's older brothers, Max, Hugo or Fred, all of whom were born in Germany.



Passenger manifest for S.S. Etruria, arr. New York 27 Feb 1893
On 27 February 1893 Frederick Thomas Gifford (1862-1932) and his wife Ellen arrived at Ellis Island, New York on board the SS Etruria from Liverpool, England with their four year old daughter Agnes Hammersley Gifford (1888-1967), giving Cleveland, Ohio as their destination on the ship's manifest.


Vignette of unidentified woman marked on cabinet card
Frederick Thomas and Ellen Gifford had a son, also named Frederick, born in Cleveland in July 1899. Their daughter Agnes married Herbert Henschel in Hutchinson, Kansas in February 1907. Ellen Gifford died in April 1908 at 1221 East 111st Street, Cleveland, and was buried at Lakeview Cemetery. It was to this same address that the vignetted portrait enlargement - perhaps looking something like the image I created in Photoshop, above - was sent.

We also know that the widowed Fred Gifford, his son and the Henschel family were living there in 1910. By February 1913, when Herbert and Agnes' second child was born, the Henschels had moved to Indiana. It seems a distinct possibility, therefore, that the enlargement is of Agnes's mother Ellen Gifford (1866-1908), and that it was commissioned some time in the five years between her death in April 1908 and their arrival in Indiana in February 1913.


Unidentified child, taken c. 1892-1895
Carte de visite by Krumhar Bros., 225 Superior St, Cleveland, Ohio
Image © and collection of Brett Payne
When this warmly dressed child visited the Krumhar studio on Cleveland's Superior Street both of the Krumhar brothers were in attendance, dating it to between 1892 and 1895. Probably aged between 7 and 9 years old, and I'm guessing a girl because a boy is unlikely to be in a dress at that age, my estimate is that she would have been born circa 1883-1888. I believe this could be be Agnes H. Gifford.


Unidentified group of 2 women & 2 children, taken c. 1892-1895
Sixth-plate tintype (63 x 84mm) by unidentified photographer
Image © and collection of Brett Payne
Inserted within the album are three loose, roughly trimmed sixth-plate tintypes, all taken in studio settings but without any indication of location. The clothing worn by the two women in this group portrait suggests they were taken in the early to mid-1890s, a time when the tintype was far more popular in North America than in England. The woman from the vignette appears seated on the right, wearing a broad-brimmed light-coloured hat, while the child from the Krumhar Bros. portrait is seated at left, also with a very flat hat. Are these two Ellen Gifford and her daughter Agnes? I think so, but then who might the other woman and younger child be?


The Gifford family at 125 Becker Av, Cleveland City, 13 June 1900
The answer to the identity of the other child may lie in the 1900 Census record, which shows the Gifford family living at 125 Becker Avenue, Cleveland. In addition to (Frederick) Thomas, Ellen and Agnes, their ten month-old son Frederick J. is shown as having born in July 1899, probably too late to be the younger child in the tintype portrait. However, from the figures in the columns to the right of her age (Married for 13 years, Mother of 4 children, of which 2 living), we can infer that Ellen had two further children who died young. The younger child could be one of those who died, or alternatively belongs to the other woman who is standing at the back.


Unidentified young man, taken c. 1915-1925
Cabinet card (Carbonette) by Wendel Studio, 13 Avenue A, New York
Image © and collection of Brett Payne
This very smartly dressed young man with a bowtie, fedora and a rose in his buttonhole probably visited the Wendel Studio in New York for a portrait in the late 1920s or early 1920s. He looks to me to be in his late teens, perhaps between 17 and 20 years old, so I estimate that he was born c.1895-1908. The birth date of Frederick J. Gifford (1899-1959) lies well within this range; he married in 1930 and died at Jamestown, New York in November 1959. His father had also died at Jamestown in 1932.


Card mount (114 x 182mm) with no photograph, c.1910-1925
By the Globe Photo Co., 309 Main St., Jamestown, N.Y.
Image © and collection of Brett Payne
My last image for the moment is, in fact, not a photograph at all. This card mount from the Globe Photo Co. studio in Jamestown, New York has lost its contents, so we may never know whose face was framed within it. However I believe that it probably originally contained a postcard format portrait, and the style of mount suggests to me a date of perhaps the 1910s or early 1920s. I found several postcard format portraits from this studio on the web, and they come from a similar era.


I have no doubt that at this point several readers will be thinking that I have amassed a good deal of circumstantial evidence, and may even have indulged in a fair amount of speculation, but have presented little in the way of proof except for the single inscription. To my mind that inscription, and more specifically the juxtaposition of name and address, establishes the connection between that particular portrait and the Henschel-Gifford family without a doubt.

From that point, I agree that I'm on much more shaky ground, but I hope you'll bear with me as I continue to build up a family tree, and attempt to link portraits to individuals within that tree. Part of the difficulty is that one has to not only populate the family tree, but also show that individuals were in the right place at the right time to have their portraits taken. It's a lengthy and time consuming exercise to unravel the complex family relationships, which I'll have to spread over several articles in due course. Next week I'll turn to the English side of the family and look at portraits from Derbyshire and Staffordshire.