. . . at least to the extent that the times allowed.
Well, people might roll up their sleeves for a game of checkers . . .
Perhaps the trip to the shore was an annual religious camp.
This young girl is the subject of many of the photographs. I tried to enlarge the banner behind her to read it, but it's just too much in shadow.
Here she is with a friend — I think they've spent the past hour making their version of a log cabin.
And here she is (second from left) all grown up. Perhaps this was her wedding day.
What a jolly affair!
I'll end back at the shore.
The O. D. Witherell was a schooner that sailed out of Bath, Maine in 1874. A thoughtful reader has advised me that it stranded near Fenwick Island Life Saving Station on April 2, 1911, while bound from New York for Philadelphia. The schooner's hull and equipment were sold at Millsboro, Delaware on May 2, 1911.
• • •
I eventually sold the glass negatives (because they took up space and weighed a ton), but not before making prints of each one.
Hello Mark:
ReplyDeleteThis is so very exciting. What wonderful prints which we find totally fascinating for the glimpse which they provide into the lives of unknown people in former times. And how much has changed in our world in a relatively short time span when one looks at these with regard to dress, pose, mannerism and activity.
Hello, Jane and Lance:
DeleteLooking at photos like this makes me acutely aware of how the Baby Boomers have embraced youth into their older years (which I do not think is a necessarily bad thing). I'm always a little taken aback to see that the older people of past generations embraced their age — to the extent that they actually looked much older than they would today. Perhaps that had something to do with beating the mortality rates of that time.
"Their version of a log cabin" - love it!
ReplyDeleteHello, Columnist - I remember constructing "clubhouses" that were less sturdy than shown above!
DeleteDear Mark,
ReplyDeleteWhat a wonderful treasure! You were so clever to have made these prints before parting with the negatives... Looking at the faces in the wedding photos, I couldn't help recalling that beautiful scene from "The Dead Poets Society" where Robin Williams takes his class of young men to see the old photos lining the halls of their school, whispering to them: "..you see gentlemen, these boys are now fertilizing daffodils. But if you listen real close, you can hear them whisper their legacy to you. Go on, lean in. Listen, you hear it? - - Carpe - - hear it? - - Carpe, carpe diem, seize the day boys, make your lives extraordinary." I can't look at a face in an old photo without hearing that-- not that I'm complaining-- it's a wonderful reminder... Thanks, Mark!
Warm regards,
Erika
Dear Erika,
DeleteI feel exactly the same way looking at old photographs. It's so strange to see a photograph like the first one of this posting, and to realize that not a single soul in that huge crowd remains, and yet we are sharing a moment that they all experienced. As I have said in my sidebar pages of antique photographs, viewing children from long ago is such a poignant experience; we see them at a point when they have their whole life to live, and yet the fullness of that life is already history.
Hello Mark, I just read the novel Mary's Neck by Booth Tarkington, about a Midwestern family that builds a vacation home on the Eastern shore, and enters the social life of that community. Your incredible glass negatives could easily be the illustrations for that story.
ReplyDeleteI love the redoubtable old lady on the beach, and the young girls in white dresses--properly chaperoned, of course.
--Road to Parnassus
I like the word "redoubtable." Doggone it, this lady's going to have fun at the beach!
DeleteIt's interesting that these images are evocative of a good story for you. At the time that I bought the box of glass negatives, I was creating editorial illustrations for magazines, and it occurred to me that I might gain a great, private repository for future reference.
I never did use the photos that way, but some of them, like the two fellows playing checkers, do have a classic Norman Rockwell quality . . .
Dear Mark - A jolly affair indeed!!! If it was her wedding day then the subdued atmosphere could be cut with a knife. She is wearing a lovely dress. A centre parting of the hair was obviously de rigueur.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if the picture of the young girls in white with flowers in their hair is a May Day Celebration?
in ancient Rome tributes were paid to Flora on May day, In Sweden fires are built and old man winter burned in effigy, and in England the fairest of maidens was chosen as Queen of the May. Was or is May Day celebrated in the States?
Dear Rosemary - I think you're right about the photo of the girls in white being a May Day celebration. May Day was celebrated in the United States as late as the 1950s, but it's gone by the wayside. My mother received corsages on May Day when she was in college, and I have photographs of my older brothers dancing around a May Pole when they were very young. Perhaps in this country, which gets more "politically correct" with each year, May Day seemed too pagan.
DeleteOh love this -i always love digging through the boxes of old photos at junk stores too. It's just like reading pages from someone's diary!
ReplyDeleteHi, Stefan - I was digging through boxes like that just this past weekend. I always look at those folks, now separated from their families, and think of them as orphans!
DeleteThese are great, Mark. I fun to see all the "costumes." The outfits on the ladies at the beach remind me of the early photos of the painters taking classes on the beaches and wharves of Provincetown which would have been very late 1800s.
ReplyDeleteThe wedding party photo also remind me of my grandfather's Christmas photos of my brother and me. They always had a wrinkled bed sheet as a backdrop. Some might also assert it was the same time period.
Hi, Steve -
DeleteIt's interesting to go back to one's own childhood photographs and look at them with an objective eye. My own childhood photographs are all black and white, well into my teen years, and the clothing dates them as practically antique (I have a few years on you). And now as I look at them, I see a certain stylishness that simply comes with their being dated. At least that's what I tell myself!
Mark - I love that all those are about "one" family...very interesting. It's like the connection I feel when viewing the lots of antiques at auction from one family.
ReplyDeleteHi, Loi - Yes, and I think such auctions of bigger estates, like the recent one for Brooke Astor, are interestingly revealing in the lesser items that are included.
DeleteMark, the schooner O.D. Witherell stranded near Fenwick Island Life Saving Station on April 2, 1911, while bound from New York for Philadelphia. The schooner's hull and equipment were sold at Millsboro, Delaware on May 2nd.
ReplyDelete