Wordless Wednesday (August 27, 2014) -- Sarah Etta [Freeman] Carpenter With Two Of Her Grandchildren

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Scan of the original photograph of my great grandmother, Sarah Etta [Freeman] Carpenter, with her grandchildren, Shirley Carpenter (my mother), and David Otis Carpenter (my mother's brother) circa 1932.  Original photograph in the collection of the author.  

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Copyright 2014, John D. Tew

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Remembering "Dr. Fred" (August 25, 2014)

I have written  before about my maternal grandmother's older sister, Helen (Cooke) Roberts and her husband, Dr. Frederick A. Roberts, of Pittsfield, Massachusetts. See the post here for example.

This past weekend while visiting my parents in New Hope, Pennsylvania, my mother found and gave to me a little newspaper clipping from the Pittsfield Eagle, addressed "To the Editor" and titled The Best Medicine. It was written by Rena Hudelston, who at the time of the letter was residing at 62 Riverview West in Pittsfield. The date of the publication is unknown, however, from the content of the letter it was after the death of "Dr. Fred" who died in 1935 at age 76.

"Dr. Fred" and his wife, Helen (who was herself a nurse), were big influences on my mother.  My mother later became an R.N. and served as a Director of Nursing at a hospital in New Jersey during her long nursing career across several states (RI, OH, CT, MA, NH and NJ).

The quality of the clipping shown above is not as good as it might be and so my best attempt at an accurate transcription is provided below.

          The best medicine        

          To the Editor of THE EAGLE: --

                  I wish to answer Dr. Franklin
               Paddock's column in Wednesday's
               Eagle, in which he lists the usual
               contents of the doctor's "black bag"
               back in the days when physicians
               made house calls.
                  There are two very important in-
               gredients he forgot that were
               brought along by our family doctor.
               They were a deep-seated love and
               trust that would confound the med-
               ics who do not make house calls.
                  Our family physician was the late
               Dr. Fred Roberts. When we ap-
               proached the house and saw the car
               parked out front with license No. 19,
               we never got excited. I think that is
               why I always remembered that a
               calm and cheerful outlook was a ne-
               cessity in a sickroom. The strange
               part is that we never seemed to
               have any illnesses we didn't feel
               confident he could cure. To me, the
               trust you have in your doctor is
               three-quarters of the cure.
                  He delivered me at birth and two
               of my four children before his de-
               mise. I will always hold a deep re-
               spect and love for this gentle and
               dedicated doctor. He was like a
               member of the family.
                                      RENA HUDELSTON
               62 Riverview West
               Pittsfield

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Scan from an original newspaper clipping in the collection of the author.
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Copyright 2014, John D. Tew
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Saturday Serendipity (August 23, 2014)

The following are recommended for inclusion on your reading list this weekend: 

1.  Diane MacLean Boumenot of One Rhode Island Family blog had an excellent post this past Wednesday about the value of close reading of genealogy journals. She illustrates with examples from the journal of the Rhode Island Genealogical Society (RIGS), Rhode Island Roots. You can -- and should -- read Diane's post here.  

2.  This week The Weekly Genealogist newsletter of NEHGS announced the availability of the 1865 Massachusetts State Census, which includes the actual town-by-town census schedules.  The announcement states, "The 1855 and 1865 Massachusetts state censuses complement the United States federal censuses, allowing researchers to trace a family every five years between 1850 and 1870. The state census can also occasionally provide additional information not present in the federal census, such as town or county of birth. For the 1865 census, an individual's town of birth was recorded for most residents of 96 individual towns. This database will be free to guest users for one month following its release."

3.  Curious about what the last Plantagenet king of England ate and what kind of lifestyle he had? New research on the bones and tooth chemistry of Richard III uncovers some interesting details here.   

4.  UpFront With NGS had a nostalgic and interesting post this week with links to articles on disappearing smells and disappearing sounds -- think the smell of the long-gone mimeograph paper and the sound of the rotary dial phone for example.  Have a look at the post and the links here.

5.  NGS also had another interesting and useful post this week on the movement patterns of Americans between various states since 1900.  There is a visual representation of how the population composition for each state has changed over the last 100+ years.  Have a look here.  

6.  I have posted on The Prism about John Barry's awesome book on The Great Influenza of 1918, but he also wrote an equally amazingly book titled Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America.  If you have not read these books I highly recommend both since they affected the lives of millions of people in the U.S. and quite possibly could offer some explanations for questions you have come across in your genealogies. If you have read or decide to read The Great Mississippi Flood, then by all means check out these photos showing the effects of the 1927 flood as posted here on Flickr.     

7.  We are hearing a lot in the news in recent days about the Cordon Sanitaire being imposed in areas of West Africa to try to control the spread of the scary Ebola virus. This tactic has been used in the past.  In Honolulu's Chinatown there was an outbreak of the bubonic plaque in 1899-1900 and a Cordon Sanitaire was imposed there with disastrous results.  Read about it and see period photographs here at The Vault.   

8.  Find-A-Grave is an extremely useful genealogy research tool that many of us use to enhance or support our other research.  If you have ever used Find-A-Grave, or plan to do so, then you really need to read this past Wednesday's post about the Find-A-Grave "terms of use" at The Legal Genealogist blog!  As always, Judy Russell, walks us step-by-step through the legalese and explains in practical terms what we can and cannot use from Find-A-Grave . . . and how.  Read Judy's post here.

9.  James Tanner of Genealogy's Star blog has an interesting post about how to deal with the changing names and boundaries of geographic/jurisdictional locales in one's genealogy research and about why citing to the original location of documents and records can be important. .  You can read his post here. 

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Copyright 2014, John D. Tew

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Friday Fotos (August 22, 2014) -- Invitation To The 1907 Cumberland High School Commencement Reception

As shown in the post of July 9, 2014 here at The Prism, and as discussed in the post here on July 21, 2014, both my maternal grandfather, Everett S. Carpenter, and his older sister, Ruth A. Carpenter, graduated from Cumberland High School on the same day -- Thursday, June 27, 1907.  Shown here in today's post is a scan from an original invitation to the graduation Commencement Reception the evening after the graduation exercises just over 107 years ago. The Commencement Reception was held at 8:00 PM on Friday, June 28, 1907 at Lonsdale Hall in Lonsdale, Rhode Island.

According to a National Register of Historic Places Inventory -- Nomination Form submitted in or around 1984, Lonsdale Hall was built in 1869 by the Lonsdale Company to serve as a community meeting place and commercial center.  It housed the local library, club rooms, and a meeting hall on the upper floors with small shops occupying the first floor. In 1888 the commercial occupants were a drug store, barber shop, dry goods store, and bakery. The building was a 3 1/2 story brick structure with bracketed cornice and windows set under segmental arches between brick pillars. 

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Scan of the original invitation in the personal collection of the author.

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Copyright 2014, John D. Tew

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Almost Heaven (August 21, 2014) -- The Adirondacks Might Not be Heaven On Earth . . . But You Can See It From There!

No internet, no cell phone, no TV, no Blackberry. 

Lakes, mountains, and the call of the loons.

 Warm days, cool nights and 

countless stars.

A-D-I-R-O-N-D-A-C-K-S!

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All photos by the author -- August 2014.

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Copyright 2014, John D. Tew

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Wordless Wednesday (August 20, 2014) -- Pop Eye's Lunch, Woonsocket, Rhode Island (March 1933)

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Scan of original newspaper clipping from a scrapbook in the family collection.

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Copyright 2014, John D. Tew

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The Daguerreotype And The Dawn Of Photography -- A Precious Genealogical Resource (August 19, 2014)

A Daguerreotype camera from 1839 in the Westlicht Photography Museum, Vienna, Austria.

For those who are lucky enough to have photographic images of ancestors from the period of around 1840 to the early 1860s, the original images were quite likely produced by a process known as the "daguerreotype." Today marks the 175th anniversary of the formal presentation of Daguerre's process to the French Academy of Sciences.  

As part of an arrangement whereby Daguerre was granted a lifetime pension in exchange for the rights to his photographic process, Daguerre agreed to present the details of his process in a step-by-step demonstration to both the Academy of Science and the Academie des Beaux-Arts on August 19, 1839.  While Daguerre gave away the rights to his process for the grant of a lifetime pension, he was shrewd enough to retain for himself the patent on the equipment that was necessary for implementing his photographic process and thus for producing the seemingly magical images that resulted.

The invention of the daguerreotype process also marks the point at which the capture of images of people left the sole domain of the rich and famous who previously were the only ones who could afford to have portraits painted or sculptures rendered. The daguerreotype made photographic images of surprising quality available to the merely affluent and eventually to the masses as the art and science of photography developed beyond the start provided by Daguerre.

The process of making a daguerreotype was laborious for both the photographer and for live subjects.  It required long exposure times of up to 30 minutes and the subject had to stay still during the entire time of exposure of the silver iodide coated copper plate in the camera.  For this reason early use of the daguerreotype was for artistic and scientific purposes more than for portraiture.  Still life art compositions and scientific specimens were immobile and could be staged in ideal bright light conditions that live subjects could not tolerate for necessary exposure times without blur-causing movements as small as the blink of the eyes.  It is for this reason that the best daguerreotypes were of inanimate objects while portraits of people were often blurred images of subjects desperately trying to maintain frozen, grim-looking visages.  It is probably also why so many early daguerreotypes were solo portraits of a single person -- fewer problems in having a single subject maintain the necessary immobility. 

By the 1860s -- and Mathew Brady's images of the U.S. Civil War with which we are all familiar -- the daguerreotype process was almost entirely replaced by much less expensive and more easily produced images.  The ambrotype was introduced in the 1850s and involved production of a positive image on glass.  In the 1860s and 1870s the tintype image became common and was produced on very thin black-lacquered iron.  The albumen print or albumen silver print was invented in 1850 and it was the first method of producing photographic images on paper.  It used the albumen from egg whites and became the dominant photographic medium from about 1855 until the start of the 20th century.  This paper-based photographic process resulted in the popularity of the carte de visite or "visiting cards," which were photograph cards on paper about 3.5 x 4 inches.  The cards became a fad and were traded among visitors and friends.  Later, 4.5 x 6.5 inch "cabinet cards" nudged aside the popular carte de visite because they were larger and mounted on cardboard stock.  Cabinet cards were the most popular and common form of photographic images from the 1870s until the advent of the Kodak Brownie camera and modern snapshots in the early 20th century.

Sadly, only a handful of Daguerre's own photographs (some still lifes, portraits, and views of Paris) still exist today due to a fire that destroyed his laboratory in 1839.  Below are some examples of daguerreotype portraits.

A daguerreotype of Louis Jacques-Mande Daguerre in 1844.

A daguerreotype of Andrew Jackson at about age 78 in 1844 or 1845. 

A daguerreotype and first authenticated photographic image of Abraham Lincoln, U.S Congressman -elect in 1846.

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For more information about Louis-Jaques-Mande Daguerre (1787 - 1851) and daguerreotypes see, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daguerreotype and http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/dagu/hd_dagu.htm?elq=bc18177019664080b23fccd9a9891e7e&elqCampaignId=8432.

Image of an 1839 Daguerreotype camera in the public domain per a grant from the author http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Susse_Frére_Daguerreotype_camera_1839.jpg 

Daguerreotype of Louis Jacques-Mande Daguerre by Jean-Baptiste Sabatier-Blot in the public domain due to an expired copyright http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Louis_Daguerre_2.jpg

Daguerreotype of Andrew Jackson in the public domain due to an expired copyright http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Andrew_Jackson-1844-2.jpg

Enhanced daguerreotype of Abraham Lincoln in the public domain due to an expired copyright http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Abraham_Lincoln_by_Nicholas_Shepherd,_1846-crop.jpg

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Copyright 2014, John D. Tew

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(August 18, 2014) -- "Our Club House Burned"

In the 1930s my father's family was living in the Union Village area of Woonsocket, Rhode Island.  He and his younger brother, John, along with some neighborhood friends had constructed a "club house" in a small shed in the backyard of their home.  Somehow the club house apparently caught fire and became a neighborhood event and a news item.  The exact cause has never been disclosed by my father or his brother and, in fact, this is the only evidence of the incident -- and it was only discovered in an old scrapbook just recently.

It was probably just one of those rare cases of inexplicable "spontaneous combustion" . . . 

Right Dad!  That's the story and you and Uncle John should stick to it since no other explanation has arisen in the last 80-some years!  

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Scan of original newspaper clipping in the collection of the author.

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Copyright 2014, John D. Tew

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