Hidden mothers, post-mortem, and 1940s Italian-Americans

(Now there’s a weird blog title for ya; how the heck do those things fit together? Well, read on, my friend, and I’ll tell you what I’m getting at…)

A day or two ago, a friend of mine posted a link to a blog post she’d found about “Hidden mothers in Victorian portraits” (and its follow-up, “More hidden mothers in Victorian photography: post-mortem photographs or not?”) by Chelsea Nichols.

I found these posts ridiculously interesting (ha, play on words of the blog title) for a variety of reasons.

For one thing, they are quite visually interesting, as they include a lot of photographs to illustrate the subject of the posts: mothers (or whoever) hiding under blankets, curtains, etc., to hold children steady in Victorian-era portraits. Remember, back in Ye Olde Dayes, the process of capturing a photograph was not instantaneous; so you had to hold still until the exposure was finished. Not so easy to get little ones to do this; hence, the mothers in the pictures.

Another reason the subject piqued my interest is that it reminded me of a couple of similar photographs that I have seen before. (Oh, that archivist brain : always pulling things up from the back-files of my mind…)

One of the photos I thought of actually fits the description of what’s being discussed — well, sans blanket:

Howard Forrer Peirce (and his mother?), from Oversize Photo #1924 by Dayton Metro Library Local History, on Flickr

That’s Howard Forrer Peirce (born 1865) and, presumably, his mother. If it was meant to be a photo of the two of them, it’s not very good, since mom is mostly hidden (much to my chagrin, as an archivist, since that’s the only pic we have of her! –if it is indeed his mother, which I’m pretty sure it is, based on what her sisters looked like!–). So I suppose it is probably a situation of trying to get the boy to cooperate and/or hold him still while the photo was exposed.

The other photo that came to mind is actually a lot more similar to the photos in the posts. But it is not from the Victorian era; it’s from the early 1940s:

Baby and hidden mother, ca. 1941

The baby in this photo is one of my aunts, and the person under the sheet is, more than likely, my grandmother. At first I wasn’t totally sure if therewassomeone under the sheet, or if they just draped it over a chair as a backdrop, but then I noticed how the sheet seems to be “holding” the baby, under the arms…so there must be a person under there.

But why? Why in the 1940s? Presumably, they were using a camera that was capable of taking an instantaneous photograph. So I guess they must have just thought it would be a fun thing to do, stylistically. (Unfortunately, anyone who would have been around — and old enough to know what was going on — the day the photo was taken…is now deceased, so I can’t ask them.)

Then, there’s one more thing I want to mention. When I was first thinking about writing this post, all I was thinking about was the “hidden mother” pictures I had seen.

But then I got to thinking: This is the second Victorian photography trend I have seen duplicated by my Italian-American ancestors in the 1940s. That’s…interesting.

Remember the post-mortem photographs I found in my grandfather’s photographs?

Now, before I go any further with my thoughts and wonderments, let me just say that I realize it would be bad science, and bad history, and just bad in general, to pretend like I could make any gross generalizations about an entire group of people or a practice, based on a handful of isolated examples.

But…it’s not going to stop me from wondering if this could, in fact, illustrate some sort of a legitimate historical trend.

Sometimes, we see something that looks cool — e.g., in photography — and we seek to replicate it, simply for the sake of “art”, without regard for the rhyme or reason behind why the thing we are replicating may have happened or been done out of necessity in the original work.

For instance, why is everyone obsessed with Instagram? Don’t they know that the original “retro” photos they are seeking to replicate look all yellow and weird because of the subpar photographic processes of the 1970s? No, they just think it looks cool, so they take a perfectly good (new) digital photo and intentionally make it look degraded…for the sake of “art”.

Similarly, I wonder if my grandparents saw older photographs of babies being held by mothers under sheets and thought, “Hey, that is a neat way to photograph a baby; let’s replicate that.” Maybe they didn’t realize why the mothers had to hold the babies (although I’m still not sure why they had to hide); or maybe it didn’t matter either way, but they just wanted to create something “retro” (before “retro” was cool — or even a term!).

Same thing with the post-mortem photos my grandfather took of his parents. People used to do that (especially in the Victorian era) because taking photogrpahs was less common then, and the deceased person might never have been photographed before, thus making the post-mortem photo your “last chance” to capture their likeness in photographic form. I wonder if my grandpa had seen some of those type of photographs and just thought, “Hey, I should do that,” when his parents died. I have seen several photographs of my grandfather’s parents — when they were alive — so I know such photos existed and were in his possession; it’s not like he had no others.

And here’s where my stab at bad history comes in:  If they were taking those pictures because they wanted to replicate others they had seen, I wonder if socio-economics had anything to do with it all.

Now, just stick with me a minute here.

The Italian immigrants of the early 1900s (like my ancestors) tended to be poorer (at least initially) than many other Americans. Being not-so-well-off (which in many cases is a great understatement) is probably why most of them left all they’d even known and came to great Land of Opportunity in the first place.

And okay, so, people (and dare I say “civilizations”) that are lagging a bit behind in a variety of areas, like technology, might tend not to have the latest-and-greatest advancements — especially since a lot of those were being churned out in the United States back then, not in backhills of northern Italy, where my relatives were from.

I wonder: did the photographers in rural Tuscany still use photographic processes that required holding still for a long time, later than most American photographers? Might my grandfather, who lived in Italy until the mid-1930s, have seen a lot more of those “hidden mother” photographs than most young men in the 1940s had?

And, as for the post-mortem photos : if things were “worse” in Italy in the early 1900s than they were in America — after all, Italians came to the USA to find work and a “better life,” not vice versa — wouldn’t that likely include people being generally poorer? And when you’re poor, what can you not afford? Well, probably “luxuries” like owning a camera or visiting a professional photographer more than every great once in a while. So it makes me wonder if those “last chance” post-mortem photographs might have been more common, up through a later date (year), in places with a greater concentration of poor people.

We typically associate these styles of photographs — the “hidden mother” and the post-mortem – with the Victorian era in America. But consider that poorer communities (such as, in my example, early-1900s rural Italy) might have still had some of the same issues (older technology that required standing still for photos; greater likelihood that the deceased had never been photographed because it was too expensive to take photos willy-nilly like we do today) that were the root causes of those “odd” styles of Victorian photos.

And if we sometimes mimic what we know, what we’ve seen, what our friends and relatives are doing or have done or did in the pretty recent past, I can imagine how it might have happened that my Italian-American grandparents ended up essentially duplicating some things that were popular (in America) decades before they themselves were even actually born. (Meanwhile, I’ve never seen such things in the collections of American-born people from the same era.)

Like I said, this is completely unscientific and not good history either. But it was a thing that made me go, “Huh, that’s weird.” So I thought I’d just wonder out loud.

Has anyone else seen any “hidden mother” or post-mortem photos from the 1940s?

99 Years of Dayton Photographers

How does anyone ever have an original idea anymore? Obviously, some people manage to do so, because new things still keep coming along. And yet, it seems like most of the time, whenever I think, “There really oughtta be X,” there already is X, and I just hadn’t found it yet.

A recent example of this phenomenon occurred to me recently, with regard to an historical listing of Dayton photographers.

For the past few months, I have been processing the Thresher-McCann manuscript collection. In addition to loose papers and scrapbooks, the collection includes 260 (yes, exactly 260 – I just finished numbering them yesterday) photographs, the majority of which are unidentified. From the very few identified ones, I have been able to “tentatively” identify some of the people in others. (I have become pretty adept at recognizing Mary and Laura Thresher, but that’s about it. I don’t know the rest of the people from Adam. Well, okay, unless it’s woman; then I don’t know her from Eve.)

However, many of the photographs have the photographer’s name, city, and sometimes street address printed on them somewhere.

Sometimes on the front:

Appleton and Hollinger (Dayton, Ohio) (ms036_0045)

.

Grossman and Owings (Dayton, Ohio) (ms036_0047)

.

Bowersox (Dayton, Ohio) (ms036_0046)

Sometimes on the back:

A. Yount (Dayton, Ohio) (ms036_0176)

.

Roger’s Portraits (Dayton, Ohio) (ms036_0048)

.

M. Wolfe (Dayton, Ohio) (ms036_0049)

And sometimes, the photorapher’s name is not even on the portrait, per se, but is written on one of those horribly acidic, construction-paper-feeling folders that old photographs are often stored in. (So if the photo came in a yucky folder or envelope, check for — and record — any useful info before casting that awful thing aside!)

I’ve actually elected to organize the unidentified photographs according to state, city, and photographer’s name, because it seemed like the most logical way to hopefully get photographs that originally went together, to remain together, not knowing who any of the people are.

As archivists know, one of the tasks in describing materials is to (hopefully) identify the date(s) of the materials, either from a given date (woohoo! I love when things are already dated!) or to make an educated guess if possible (which you would either put in brackets and/or add some relative words — e.g., circa, about, approximately, before, after, etc.).

So, putting those last two paragraphs together, you get the thought that kept going through my mind : Man, it would be awesome if I had an index to Dayton photographers, where I could look up the photographer’s name alphabetically and get the listings (hopefully with the different addresses of their various studios over the years), along with the dates when they operated at each location —- which could then be used to establish an approximate time frame for the photograph(s) in question.

Once I finished organizing the photographs, I finally got around to checking the library catalog to see whether we already owned such a book. Failing that, I was going to ask around to my co-workers and Dayton archives colleagues, to find out whether such a thing existed (and maybe Dayton library just didn’t have it for some reason). And failing THAT, I was prepared to roll up my sleeves, cozy up with the Dayton city directories, and produce the thing myself.

Well, lo and behold — the thing does already exist. Of course. Ha!  I’m not sorry that someone has already done all that work for me; it’s just another one of those things — it figures that this awesome idea was already had by someone — apparently Richard D. Fullerton…before I was even born. Ha!

The index I am referring to is 99 Years of Dayton Photographers (1982) by Richard D. Fullerton.

We have several copies of the book at the Dayton Metro Library — unfortunately for you who may wish to borrow it, they are all non-circulating, so you’ll have to use it in the library (all copies live at Main) [but some other local libraries have it too] — so I retrieved one and set about trying to narrow down a time frame for some of the undated Dayton photographs (such as those above).

The book has a helpful introduction. Fullerton lists the sources that he used (including city directories, census records, photographs themselves, and others), and he also cites those sources throughout the book, to tell where he got a particular piece of information about a name, date, or location.

Fullerton also gives information in the introduction about the approximate years of use for different kinds of photographs, also identifying the photo process’s hey day, which can help with dating photographs as well.

Having archival training and a copy of Ritzenthaler & Vogt-O’Connor’s photo preservation book, aka my photo archives Bible, I already had a pretty good idea of those approximate time periods. But, it was a great idea to include them, since some photographers worked for many years in Dayton (*cough*Bowersox*cough*), and so simply having the dates of the shop didn’t narrow it down much.

Between knowing which types of photographs were popular when, and having access to Fullerton’s book, I was able to established somewhat more useful dates — okay, anything is more useful than “Undated” — for the Dayton imprint photographs. Now, unfortunately, most of the unidentified photos in the collection weren’t actually made in Dayton, so Fullerton’s book can’t help me with those.

I don’t suppose anyone knows of a book like this for Cincinnati?

In any event, I am pleased that I found the Fullerton book. It definitely saved me a lot of work. (Now, don’t get me wrong, a bunch of completely unidentified photographs don’t usually warrant searching all those city directories just to get a slightly-more-useful-than-”undated” date that I can stick in a finding aid. I mean all the work that I would have done creating an index of long-lasting usefulness — like Fullerton did!)

One more thing : Even having those narrower dates isn’t necessarily all that helpful to me, someone who doesn’t know the names or the faces of the unidentified people. I think it would be a lot more useful to genealogists — if you have a photo, and you know who it is, but you’re wondering, “How old is great-great-grandma in this picture?” Or, “Could that be Great-Uncle James? Was he even still alive then?” Or….you get the idea. But hey, sometimes having a place and an approximate date and a location could narrow down the other unknowns quite a lot for you, depending on how your family history played out.

Anyhow, I hope you enjoyed this little jaunt into one of my “there should really be…if there’s not, I’m so going to…oh wait, there already is…okay, good…using that now” moments.

Save your digital photos, Part 3: Why you need to do it (Photo Reprise)

Okay, so Part 2 was a bit verbose. Sorry. I suppose you could say I am nothing if not thorough?

I warned my husband that it had gotten a bit long, and after he read it, his comment was: “You were right. It does make you sound a bit insane!”

To which, I replied: “Better insane than sorry.”

And I stand by that.

However, if you made it this far in the series, I want to remind you simply about why I posted that seemingly endless outline for my digital photo preservation strategy: to help you preserve your own digital memories.

And since they say that “a photo is worth 1000 words,” I thought I’d drive the point home by simply sharing a selection of digital memories that I personally wouldn’t want to see lost.

(All photos below are either from my own personal collection or those of my friends/family, used with permission.)

If this doesn’t impress upon you the reason I wrote Parts 1 & 2 — and why I want to burn the bottom-line concept of LOCKSS (lots of copies keeps stuff safe!) into your brain – I don’t know what will.

And, go:

Lisa

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Gina

.

Sara

.

The Aisle

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The Kiss

.

Out the Doors

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Cakey Kiss

.

The Wind

.

The WHOLE family

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Dancing with my 90-year-old grandfather (who died in 2008)

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Seeing the house where grandpa was born (in Italy)

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57 years and 7 kids later

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Forum at Rome, Italy

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Smoky Mountain Honeymoon

.

Erectheion at Athens, Greece

.

Cades Cove, TN

.

New Family

.

Meeting Mom and Dad

.

Day 1

.

All photographic moments that can never — NEVER — be replaced.

If that thought doesn’t make you want to make an active effort to preserve your digital memories (and the print ones, too), then no amount of words from me can help you.

Thanks to my family and friends who gave me permission to use their photos.

Save your digital photos, Part 2: How I do it

In Part 1 of “Save your digital photos,” I listed a number of reasons why you should be backing up your digital photos.

And I mentioned LOCKSS, which I will reiterate and emphasize again here, is the TLDNR take-away message I want you to get from both Parts 1 and 2. If you read or remember nothing else, please just always remember this rule of thumb in regards to your digital files, and (assuming you follow it) you should be good to go:

LOCKSS = Lots of copies keeps stuff safe.

Also in Part 1, I mentioned this OHS blog post with “Tips for Saving Your Digital Photographs”. My own personal digital photo preservation routine seems to fall within the parameters they recommend, so I thought maybe I would share the specifics of it here, to give an idea of what a home user might do to ensure that their digital photogrpahs will both exist, and be accessible, for a long time.

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And now, for some minutiae.

The following are the details of my own personal digital preservation regimen. (So, to be clear, this is what I do at home, not in my professional capacity as an archivist at the library.)

My way is certainly not the only solution or even necessarily the best. But I feel that it has served me well in the past. I can confidently say, “If my laptop died tomorrow, I really wouldn’t be that upset about it, because I know all my stuff is safely stored in multiple places.”

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Here is what I do, roughly broken down into steps:

Step 1: Download the photos.

At least once a month (I have a reminder set), I download the photos from my smart phone and my digital camera onto my computer’s hard drive. I usually leave the photos on the camera’s memory card, also, for about a month. For instance, at the end of May, I would copy all of May’s photos onto my hard drive, leave the a copy of the May photos on the camera, and delete the April photos still left on the camera. I usually dump this month’s photos into a virtual holding tank, a folder called (creatively enough) “New Pics,” until I am ready to organize them. (Don’t worry; I do the organizing pretty soon after the data dump. But I usually have to collect the images from two cameras and an iPhone before I start organizing, to make sure I have everything.)

Why do Step 1? Copying your photos from your camera devices onto your hard drive gives you a second copy of them and protects you from losing the photos if you lose your camera or phone. (I know some cell phones have “cloud” backup, but I bet your digital camera probably doesn’t.) However, this only works until the memory in your camera or phone fills up. You will need a more long-term solution (see Step 4+), also, but this is good for starters.

Step 2: Create & utilize named folders.

I have folders for each month (e.g., “2011-10 Oct”), with descriptively named folders for each event in that month. I usually use the ISO 8601 date and then a descriptive name, such as: “2011-12-25 Christmas.” If I have random pictures (no particular event), I just toss them into the appropriate month’s folder.

Why do Step 2? It’s easy to accumulate a lot of digital photos (since they are cheap and easy to create!), and they can become a jumbled, unmanageable mess pretty easily. Also, if you have photos from the same event but different cameras, the potentially different sequential file naming schemes might not keep them next to each other in your “All My Photos Ever” folder. Step 2 does not technically do anything to help preserve the images themselves, but it will help preserve the meaning of the photos. (Ever found a bunch of old photos and thought, “Gee, I wonder what was going on here?” or “Grandma looks so young; I wonder what year this was?” Yeah, thought so.)

Step 2b: Cull the collection.

Once you’ve got all the photos from a certain event in front of you, take a few minutes to delete any you don’t need or want. Delete pocket shots (the camera equivalent of “butt dialing“). At least consider deleting blurry ones and ones with really unfortunate facial expressions. If you have several shots that are nearly identical, consider choosing the best one and deleting the rest.

You could do this culling after Step 1 (file download) or after Step 3 (filenaming), but I think it makes the most sense after you’ve filed by event (so you can see everything together) but before you go to all the trouble of renaming everything.

Why do Step 2b? There are two good reasons to do this: #1 digital storage is pretty cheap these days, but it’s still not free; and #2 you won’t have to wonder “now which 2011 family Christmas photo did I decide was the best one?” every time you want it. (If you really want to keep all the shots even though it looks like a flipbook, you could mark the best one as “BEST” (so creative, I know) when filenaming (see step 3), but that doesn’t help you save storage space.)

A word of caution about Step 2b: On the flip side, don’t delete photos you actually want just to save space, unless you are really desperate. My husband fully supports my mass proliferation of photographs, reminding me: storage space is cheap.  So, if you really want it, find a way to keep it. (You can buy more CDs or a bigger hard drive; but once those photos are gone, they’re gone.)

Step 3: Create meaningful file names.

I change the generic photo filenames assigned by the camera to something more descriptive, which helps me find the image I want without having to look at every file. Again, I like the ISO 8601 date, the event, then the generically assigned file name (most cameras use a sequential numbering system so this keeps the photos in chronological order), and then sometimes info about the subject. For example: “2011-12-25 Christmas IMG_0099 opening gifts.jpg” or “2011-12-25 Christmas IMG_0100 Lisa Matt.jpg.” (Note: You should try to keep the file names short, because some operating systems have trouble with longer file names. I am not always good about keeping things short — you’ve read my blog, right? — so I am guilty of not doing this. But I still thought I ought to mention it.)

Meaningful folder and file names

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Okay, so you’ve got your photos from all your digital devices (go you!); you’ve organized them in relevant folders and given them meaningful filenames (woohoo!). Now, you want to make sure all that hard work doesn’t go to waste. You need to protect those image files against the many ways they can be lost (see Part 1).

If all else fails, remember LOCKSS: Lots of copies keeps stuff safe.

Step 4: Do regular external backups.

When I say “regular,” I mean pretty often. I do my backup of photos (as well as other files) once a week (another reminder is set).

And when I say “external,” I mean to another physical location besides your the hard drive to which you downloaded the photos in Step 1. I mean, create a regularly-updated second copy of your stuff somewhere. That “somewhere” could be an external hard drive, CDs, DVDs, cloud storage, USB drives, etc.

Personally, I don’t recommend CDs, DVDs, or USB drives (and do I even need to address floppy disks?) because they can go bad over time, and you have to remember to check them periodically (and possibly refresh them – which means, making copies on new disks/media to replace the old ones). I recommend using an external hard drive of some sort, because if you keep using the same drive every time to backup things, you will realize immediately when it goes bad because you are accessing it every week to make those backups. If you put your photos on a CD and throw it in a drawer, thinking, “Okay, there’s my backup for 2011,” then in a few years when your computer crashes, you might find that CD can’t be read anymore either. Then what? You just lost 2011′s photos.

By using a hard drive, which I will access frequently to make additional backups (thereby acting as a check to make sure it’s still working, without having to remember to check it for no other reason than checking it), I don’t have to remember the CDs (or DVDs or USB sticks or SD cards or whatever) that I stowed away years ago and hope they still work when I need them; or to remember to check them every 6-12 months or so.

Nevertheless, any backup media you choose to use is better than none at all. Because if you make any backup copies, there’s at least a chance they’ll still work when you need them. If you make no copies at all, I guarantee you will lose those photos when your computer/phone/camera dies.

In my case, I use an external hard drive system called a NAS — Network-Attached Storage — which has a two-disk RAID (redundant array of independent disks) configuration.

NAS (Network-Attached Storage)

Without getting too technical, this means that I can backup my files over our home network to this little box that has two identical hard drives in it (in our case, 1 terabyte each). Although the box technically contains 2 TB of space, you can only fill up one disk’s worth of space – in my case, 1 TB – because the second disk exists solely to backup the first. So, in this way, I actually have a double backup going on. If one of the two disks goes bad, I still have a backup.

Why do Step 4? You need an external second copy of your files in case your first copy gets lost, stolen, destroyed, corrupted, or otherwise killed in some way.

Step 5: Keep an off-site backup.

Now, if you opted to go with cloud storage for your Step 4, where your photos are backed up over the Internet, then you may not need to do Step 5 also. Theoretically, anyone with any business running a cloud storage service should have your files protected in multiple ways, and obviously this storage is off-site because it is stored on the company’s servers in who-knows-where. So, if you used cloud storage for Step 4, you are probably covered on Step 5 also.

I do use online storage for part of my Step 5. I have an account at Smugmug, where I am able to backup an unlimited number of photos for $40 per year. The site has lots of cool features (and no, they aren’t paying me to promote them), but I mostly got the account for backup purposes. However, I have since implemented another off-site backup solution, since the cost for restoring all my images from Smugmug would be pretty high.

As my other off-site backup solution, I have a second pair of external hard drives (in addition to the ones in the NAS). I keep one of the drives at my house at any given time and make weekly backups to it, just like I do the NAS. The other drive is at my parents’ house, 100+ miles away. Whenever I visit my parents (usually every few months), I swap the two hard drives.

One of my off-site backup solutions

Why do Step 5? Keeping an off-site backup gives you an additional layer of protection against more types of loss. Let’s say you do Steps 1-4, but your backup is stored at your house, along with your computer. What if someone steals your computer and your external hard drive? What if your home is destroyed by a fire or natural disaster? If it’s a house fire, then storing your off-site backup at a friend’s house nearby will save you, but what if it’s a major disaster such as a hurricane, earthquake, or flood? Odds are, if your friend’s house is in the same metro area, it will be affected also. Ideally, you would want your off-site storage several hundred miles away. This is another plus to cloud storage, because odds are, those servers are going to be hundreds of miles away from you and probably spread across many different locations.

My swap-a-hard-drive-at-Mom-and-Dad’s-house method is pretty good, but it might be a couple of months out-of-date. But at least I can get those last couple of months’ of picturse off of Smugmug. It’s a lot easier to copy the files from a hard drive than to get them back from the Internet either through download or ordering CDs (which would be expensive and I don’t even want to think about how many CDs I would need to order from them).

Step 6: Print out the pictures.

Any photos that I want to be accessible for many years, I have printed. Yes, this costs money. Do it anyway. I don’t recommend printing your photos at home; photo print services have better machines, processes, and inks. Just leave it to the pro’s. Personally, I use Shutterfly (and no they aren’t paying me), but there are many good ones.

Another plus to using an online photo printing site is that it can be an off-site backup, depending on how long the photos are stored there. You can order photo CDs if you need to. In fact, as I was fact-checking to write this, I learned that Shutterfly now has unlimited free photo storage; they didn’t used to, which was part of why I got Smugmug, among other things. Anyway, the point is: free online photo storage – with the option to order your photos on CDs (if you need them later) – does exist, so there’s really no good excuse not to do it. If you don’t have Internet access, go to the public library; furthermore, if you don’t have Internet access, how are you even reading this?

I like Shutterfly because the pictures look good, they aren’t too expensive ($0.15 per 4×6, currently), and (perhaps the biggest factor why I use them) they print the filename on the back. Remember all that filenaming you did? Yeah, here’s another way it pays off. Not necessarily having to rewrite all that again on the back of your prints. Although, you might want to write on them; that the pre-printed filename may rub off eventually. Without going off on a tangent about the best way to archivally label your photos, just please make sure your prints are labeled in some way (Step 6b) – or else you’ll still have the whole, “What was going on here and when?” scenario years later, if you don’t transfer the descriptions to the prints also.

Why do Step 6? For all the time I’ve spent developing and implementing my plan for how to keep my digital photos safe, I must admit, I still don’t 100% trust digital-only. I could write a whole separate blog entry about why that is, but suffice it to say that anything digital is always going to be technology-dependent, meaning you will need certain equipment and software in order to access it.

You know what’s not technology-dependent? Hard copy. That’s why you can still rummage through Grandma’s box of photos, even though the camera or even the negatives may be long gone. Back in the Day, the only option for enjoying your photos was to have prints made. And as long as those prints exist and you’ve got eyes to see, you’ll be able to enjoy them. You won’t be rooting around looking for a way to access that old hard drive or disk — assuming the media hasn’t gone bad — in 2050. You can just kick back with an album or box of pictures. Old School.

No special equipment required.

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Okay, I know that was very long and involved and full of details. Part of that is because I’m verbose. But part of that is because actually managing to effectively preserve your photo memories in this day and age is involved. You must make a conscious effort to do it. And for some people, simply telling them, “You need to backup your photos,” is not really all that helpful. So I thought perhaps sharing something a little more step-by-step might be helpful.

This post is an example of one possible plan for keeping your digital photos safe. There are many options. And, like I have said, the way described here (“my” way) is not the only way or even necessarily the best way. But I think I have all the major bases covered. I can say with some degree of confidence that if my laptop kicked the bucket tomorrow (again, knock on wood), all my photos are safe because they exist somewhere else (in some cases multiple somewheres). I would even go so far as to say that if my house burned to the ground with all my physical belongings inside (WAY knock on wood), I could replace all of my digital photos except maybe the last week’s worth.

So while some might call all of this “overkill,” I call it “peace of mind.”

Save your digital photos, Part 1: Why you need to do it

I can’t remember the last time I so much as held a film camera. I have been shooting all my photos with a digital camera for years now. I’d be willing to bet that many of the rest of you have been doing the same. It’s quick, easy, convenient, cheap (free even – after the initial cost of the camera – because you don’t have to pay to develop film, and prints are optional), etc. So go ahead, take 10 shots of that weird bug you found on your porch.

My favorite part of digital photography is the ability to take a photo, check it, and take it again if you don’t like it – no more disappointment when you get the film back; no more taking 3 shots “just in case” (and still maybe not getting a good one).

What’s not to love, right?

Well, from an archivist’s perspective: a lot.

To a certain extent, I think a lot of archival and historical material manages to survive “by accident.” Once something is committed to a tangible medium, such as paper (a printed photograph, a letter, a diary, a newspaper, or whatever), it is pretty much going to remain in existence (somewhere) until it is physically destroyed in some way (thrown away, burned, flooded, shredded, etc.). Even materials stored in horrid conditions still sometimes manage to survive and are perfectly usable after decades. (Remember that box of old photos you found in Grandma’s sweltering attic? Okay, not the best storage location, but by God, they were in that shoebox and still perfectly viewable. And hopefully you rescued them to a more appropriate storage spot, like a main floor closet. Right? RIGHT?!)

Now, don’t get me wrong, your digital photos are still perfectly susceptible to dying in a fire or any of those other things I described — whether it’s the camera itself, the media card, your hard drive, or your prints. But in my opinion, digital photos are actually more fragile than old-school film/print photographs, because it actually seems to take a lot more work to keep them safe.

With both regular film photos and digital photos, you have to snap the picture, and you have the option to make prints. If you make prints and keep them safe the same way you would your old came-from-a-film-negative prints, then you are reasonably good to go on that front, as far as preserving your memories. But with the digital photos, you have no film negative – so what if you want to make another print? You need the original digital photo. (You could make a copy from one of your prints—if you have any—but it wouldn’t be as good of quality because it’s really a copy of a copy; the digital is the original.)

So what should you do to protect those digital photos, to ensure that they will both exist, and be accessible to you, for a long time?

The Ohio Historical Society’s recent blog post “Tips for Saving Your Digital Photographs” (May 7, 2012) has lots of great general advice in regards to safeguarding your digital photographs. In addition to general tips on how and where to save your files, the post has advice about the best way to use CD-Rs as a backup method, file formats and naming, and making prints.

I am pleased to report that my personal practices in regards to digital photo preservation seem to fall within the recommendations made in that OHS blog post, so in Part 2, I will share the specific details of my digital photo preservation regimen.

But before I get into any minutiae, I want to drill one thing into your head. If you take nothing else away from this article, please, for the love of God, remember LOCKSS, an acronym meaning “Lots of Copies Keeps Stuff Safe.”

Golden Rule of Saving Digital Content: Remember LOCKSS = Lots of Copies Keeps Stuff Safe.

If you only have one copy of something, especially if that something is digital, I can almost guarantee you that at some point, you are going to lose it. It will not be a matter of “if” but a matter of “when” and “how.”

Ever had your hard drive or disk crash and just stop working with little or no warning? Had your computer zapped by lightning? Spilled a drink in your laptop? Had your computer get virus’d, hacked, or stolen? Lost your USB thumb drive? Had your camera or cell phone get lost or stolen? Dropped your camera or cell phone (perhaps into a body of water)? Left your electronics in the car on a hot day?

Yeah, that’s what I thought. Hey, you’re not alone. These things happen to the best of us. Now, the question is, the next time one of those things happens to you, how many of your precious memories will be lost along with your electronics?

Now that I’ve really got your attention, stay tuned for Part 2, and I’ll tell you exactly what I do to keep my photos safe from the disasters described above (and doubtless many that I can’t even think of right now).

Woodland Cemetery added to National Register of Historic Places

Woodland Cemetery is one of my favorite places in Dayton. I’ve always loved wandering around cemeteries (yes, I’m weird like that), and Woodland is just…amazing. But don’t just take my word for it:

Woodland’s awesomeness was recently recognized by the U.S. Department of the Interior, which, on Nov. 22, 2011, added Woodland’s 105-acre Victorian section to the National Register of Historic Places (see Dayton Daily News 12/14/2011 and 12/18/2011, also Woodland’s press release).

This is actually Woodland’s second entry on the National Register; the Romaneqsue style chapel (built in 1889) was added in 1978.

Woodland Cemetery opened in 1843—for more history of the cemetery, visit their web site or the Dayton Metro Library Local History Room—and since then has become the final resting place of many of Dayton’s most prominent citizens, including the Wright Brothers, Charles F. Kettering, Edward Deeds, John H. Patterson, and Benjamin Van Cleve.

However, according to the Dayton Daily News (12/18/2011):

Although remains of many prominent citizens are buried or rest in crypts at Woodland, [President and chief executive Dave] FitzSimmons said the Historic Register’s selection was based on the cemetery’s notable “curvilinear” design by landscape architect Adolph Strauch (1822-83), who took advantage of the vistas created by the rolling wooded terrain. He was a proponent of what came to be known as the Rural Garden Cemetery Movement.

The winding paths of Woodland are indeed a sight to behold. I have taken my camera to the cemetery a few times, usually looking for some particular grave, but I’m always amazed by the scenery in general. Without further adieu, here are some of my favorite scenes and “residents” of Woodland:

Panoramic view of Downtown Dayton from the Lookout Point

Van Cleve family

Benjamin Van Cleve held many important public positions, including clerk of courts, in the early days of Dayton. His son John W. Van Cleve was similarly important. (Check out the Van Cleve-Dover Collection at Dayton Metro Library.)

Charles G. Bickham grave

Charlie Bickham — son of Dayton Journal editor W. D. Bickham — served in the Spanish-American War and the Philippine-American War and was awarded a Congressional Medal of Honor. He wasn’t bad to look at either. (Check out the Bickham Collection at DML.)

A. W. Drury grave

I’m probably throwing you a curve ball with this one. A. W. Drury wrote one of my favorite local history reference books: History of the City of Dayton and Montgomery County, Ohio, 2 vols. (1909).

Samuel and Sarah Forrer

Samuel Forrer was the Resident Engineer for the Miami-Erie Canal. To give you an idea of how important that made him to the project, here’s some trivia: when the canal opened in Dayton in 1829, “the Forrer” was the second canal boat to arrive, second only to the “Gov. Brown” (named for Ohio governor Ethan A. Brown who was a major influence in getting Ohio’s canal projects started). I am currently in the process of organizing the Forrer-Peirce-Wood Collection (which you probably already know, if you’ve been reading my blog long!), which includes many of Samuel’s papers, as well as those of several of his descendants.

You were probably expecting me to show you the graves of some of more well-known “crowd pleasers” like the Wright Brothers, Dunbar, Johnny Morehouse, J. H. Patterson, Deeds, Kettering, Cooper, or even Zeigler. Oh, I have pics of most of those too (just click the links), but I said I wanted to highlight some of my “favorite” people. I suppose they become my favorites because I’ve “spent so much time with them” — or, with their writings, or their lives. I become very interested in the people whose “stuff” I am organizing. It’s hard not to; you’re basically reading their diary (sometimes literally).

And now, a couple more simple scenes:

Saint Mary's Catholic Church on Xenia Avenue

Fall Foliage

And I have tons more…check out my Woodland Cemetery Flickr set to see the rest.

Five Oaks

Before it was a neighborhood…or even a park…it was a house. Five Oaks was the name that Jeremiah H. Peirce, a local lard oil manufacturer and later lumber dealer, gave to his 1854 home, apparently naming the estate after “five stately oak trees” situated on the four-acre property (Dayton History; Burroughs; FONIA).

I thought I would share some photos and information about the Five Oaks estate, as a nice, light entry for around the holidays.

This annotated map shows the location of the J. H. Peirce and boundaries estate in 1875. A lot of these old maps don’t show street names, so I’ve added the (current) street names to help you get your bearings in the map:

Location of Five Oaks, 1875

(You can view a high resolution version of the original Harrison Township map on Dayton Remembers, Dayton Metro Library’s digital images collection.)

Charles Sullivan, well-known in the Montgomery County Historical Society (now Dayton History) many decades ago, reminisced about the area in the late 19th century, mentioning two homes in particular that were off the west side of Forest Avenue (or, Tate’s Mill Road, in early accounts):

Opposite Shaw ave. a lane ran up to the home of Samuel Forrer, a two story brick, still standing. He was a well known civil engineer… He had six children and the descendants are still [1943] in the locality.

Opposite Neal ave. was the lane running up the hill to “Five Oaks” the residence of J. H. Peirce, a son-in-law of Samuel Forrer. He had 8 children and was in the lumber industry at the corner of Wayne and State now a railroad yard.

Here is a current Google Map showing the area now known as Five Oaks. The little green splotch of Five Oaks Park (northwest corner of 5 Oaks Avenue and Squirrel Road) is where the Five Oaks estate was originally. Samuel Forrer’s home was located on part of the Grandview Medical Center property.

And now for the really good stuff: pictures!

Since many of us probably have gingerbread on the brain right now, I thought it might be fun to share a different kind of “gingerbread house” — gingerbread in the sense of Victorian architectural embellishments. The Five Oaks house had some really neat “gingerbread” around its eaves, as you will see.

This photo, probably from the late 1860s or early 1870s — I suspect those two little boys are Jeremiah’s two youngest children, J. Elliot and Howard; the woman, probably his wife Elizabeth (who died in 1874) — shows what the Five Oaks mansion looked like in its early days:

Five Oaks, before the tower was built (Forrer-Peirce-Wood Collection)

About 1890, an addition, including a tower, was built on the north end of the house:

Peirce Homestead (Lutzenberger Collection)

Here’s a wonderful cyanotypephotograph, showing roughly the same view but from a little further back, so you can see the trees:

Five Oaks (Forrer-Peirce-Wood Collection)

After the tower was added, people sometimes referred to the Peirce house as “The Castle on the Hill” (Dayton History).

In a 1980 article about the Five Oaks neighborhood, long-time resident George Loney had this to say about the Peirce homestead (quoted from Burroughs):

There was still a lot of open land around here when I was a kid, and I sure remember that old Peirce castle. It really was a castle. The stones had been imported from Europe, there was a turret and what looked like a dungeon underneath. It was all hidden in the woods and surrounded by three ponds. Mr. Peirce used to hang a rope with a noose on it in the woods to scare us off. I guess we did get on his nerves–all the kids in the neighborhood used to sneak around there. Of course, the castle’s gone now…

The “Mr. Peirce” of this anecdote must refer to J. Elliot Peirce, the only “Mr. Peirce” that Loney could have known in his childhood. J. H. Peirce died in 1889; J. Elliot was his son. Members of the Peirce family lived at Five Oaks until the 1930s: J. H.’s second wife Mary lived there until 1929 along with two of J. H.’s unmarried daughters, Sarah and Elizabeth, both of whom died in 1930. I don’t think J. Elliot actually lived at Five Oaks with his family — Mary, Sarah, and Elizabeth lived there — but according to city directories, he did live very nearby  for a while, at 551 N. Old Orchard Ave., according to a 1919-20 directory; that same directory lists the others at “nec [northeast corner] Five Oaks and Old Orchard Ave.”

In 1946, the four-acre was purchased by the city for a park, and the house was razed (Burroughs; Dayton History). Five Oaks Park now occupies the land.

For more information on Five Oaks or the Peirce family, come see us at the Dayton Metro Library, Local History Room (basement of Main); or feel free to leave a comment on this blog. If photos are what you’re after, check out our Flickr set about the Forrer-Peirce-Wood Collection.

This post was written in advance on Dec. 17, 2011.

*****

Bibliography

Burroughs, Virginia. “Diversity helps keep Five Oaks neighborhood vital.” Dayton Daily News, 8 Aug. 1980, p. Z6-15. Available in Dayton Local History Room, Clippings File #3908 (Neighborhoods–Five Oaks).

Dayton City Directories. Available at the Dayton Metro Library, Dayton, Ohio.

Dayton History. “Five Oaks.” Accessed 15 Dec. 2011.  http://www.daytonhistory.org/archives/who_fiveoaks.htm.

Everts, L. H. Combination Atlas Map of Montgomery County, Ohio. Philadelphia : Hunter Press, 1875. Dayton Remembers: Preserving the History of the Miami Valley. Accessed 17 Dec. 2011 through Dayton Remembers: http://content.daytonmetrolibrary.org/cdm/; or, find in a library.

Five Oaks Neighborhood Improvement Association (FONIA). “Five Oaks History.” Accessed 3 Dec. 2011. http://www.fiveoaksdayton.com/credits.html.

Forrer-Peirce-Wood Collection (MS-018), Dayton Metro Library, Dayton, Ohio. This collection is publicly available for research at the Dayton Metro Library, Main Library, Local History Room, 215 E. Third St., Dayton, OH 45402. Many photos from the collection can be seen at the DML Flickr site, http://www.flickr.com/photos/dmlhistory/.

Lutzenberger, William. “The Peirce Homestead.” Photo #0541. Lutzenberger Collection (MS-024), Dayton Metro Library, Dayton, Ohio. Photo available online: http://content.daytonmetrolibrary.org/cdm/singleitem/collection/lutzenberge/id/630.

Sullivan, Charles F. “The Covington Pike” (15 Sept. 1943). In Sullivan’s Papers, 425-437. Dayton, OH: Dayton & Montgomery County Public Library, 1995?. Available at the Dayton Metro Library, call no. 977.173 S949S. Transcription accessed, 15 Dec. 2011, at: http://www.daytonhistorybooks.com/covington_pike.html.

Notes on the American Archivist’s 2011 issues

Today is my last day of work until after Christmas. I hit a nice stopping point on my current project yesterday, and so today, rather than get started on the next bit and then leave it for a week, I opted to pass this nice, quiet Wednesday by catching up on some professional reading materials, namely the last couple of issues of the SAA publications American Archivist and Archival Outlook.

The items that most caught my eye in the Spring/Summer issue of American Archivist were Christopher Prom’s article on using Google Analytics with your archives web site (I do love stats!) and the two items on pertaining to Kate Theimer (author of the ArchivesNext blog), including her article on “Archives 2.0″ and the review of her book Web 2.0 Tools and Strategies for Archives and Local History. (It’s funny: I did a review of that book myself here on this blog [June 18, 2011] , shortly before I realized it had been reviewed in American Archivist.)

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I found two items from the Fall/winter 2011 issue particularly interesting as well, and I have a little more to say about these:

Jean Dryden’s article “Copyfraud or Legitimate Concerns? Controlling Further Uses of Online Archival Holdings” had some interesting findings. The study showed that archives sometimes use watermarks or “terms of use” statements in an attempt to maintain control over how people use the the archival materials they have posted online. Sure, we all know that’s true. But the article pointed out that in some cases, repositories incorrectly place their “terms of use” requirements under the heading of “copyright” when really there may be no actual “copyright” issue involved. When this happens, it is a case of “copyfraud,” or “asserting false claims of copyright.”

I had never heard that term before — copyfraud — but I’m certain I have seen examples of it.

One example: it always bugs me when I see a photo that is clearly public domain slapped with a “copyright” symbol. Just because you scanned it, doesn’t mean you own the copyright or that it even has a copyright. (Archivists often prefer to digitize images that are public domain because they don’t present copyright concerns.)

Now, I’m not a copyright lawyer by any means, so I don’t know…perhaps there are some “copyrights” to be had with respect to the digital version of the photo. For instance, if I snapped a (no-flash) photograph of a friend standing in front of an historic painting, I obviously don’t own the rights to the painting, but I own the rights to the snapshot I just created.

I often wonder how much some archival respositories really understand about the limits they can place on use of their materials — mainly the ones that have those iron-clad statements demanding “prior written permission” for basically all types of use.

What about fair use for educational purposes or non-commercial purposes? What if I want to write a little historical sketch on this blog and include a brief quote from a primary source that has been slapped with one of those strict terms of use statements? I don’t make any money off this; I cite my sources; I at least try to keep things relatively educational. In my opinion, that’s fair use.

Another item of consideration is the whole published/unpublished thing. I’m not just talking about whether I plan to publish my thing that cites your thing. I’m talking about whether the original thing in question was ever published to start with. The whole “pre-1923 is safe” thing is specific to published works. If we’re talking about something that was never published, there are some different rules, hinging on the death date of the author. (Check out this sweet “Is it protected by copyright?” slider created by the ALA if you need help figuring out whether something is copyrighted.)

So what do you do if you want to cite an unpublished manuscript written by someone who died in 1850, but it has one of those weird, super-restrictive use statements attached to it? Since the author died more than 70 years ago and the work is unpublished, it is supposed to be public domain, and theoretically you should not need permission to use it. But I think we have all seen repositories with use statements quite to the contrary, even though the material is super-old and unpublished. So, which is it? Which is right? I honestly don’t know for certain — I reiterate: I’m no lawyer.

But as someone who is generally gun-ho for sharing information, knowledge, and history, in the case of something that appears (based on copyright) to be “public domain,” I don’t think I would worry too much about using said source and even including a few quotes (all with proper attribution, of course). Because as far as I can tell, such restrictive use statements–on material that to all (other) outward appearances is public domain–seem to over-step the boundaries of what the institution can really demand or expect–let alone enforce. Unless there is some fancy language that can be added to the Deed of Gift that supercedes regular copyright laws (in which case, by all means, please show me your signed deed of gift along with your uber-restrictive use statement).

But getting back to Dryden’s article… Let me be clear: as I understand it, an institution is only guilty of “copyfraud” per se if they claim a “copyright” that they do not actually hold. If similar claims are made under the heading of “Terms of Use”, it’s not “copyfraud” but may still (as Dryden said) “be compromising their core mission of making their holdings available for use.”

*****

The other really interesting article in the Fall/winter 2011 issue was Boyer, Cheetham, and Johnson’s case study “Using GIS to Manage Philadelphia’s Archival Photographs.”

They discussed a project is that the City Archives of Philadelphia has established a GIS-mapped Photo Archive at www.phillyhistory.org. Essentially, the site lets users search photographs depicting more than 150 years’ of Philadelphia’s history…but thanks to GIS, which geo-tags each photo with its location, users can search not only by keywords or time periods (or several other criteria) but also by location (street, intersection, neighborhood, etc.).

To put it simply, this project is completely awesome.

What they’ve done is similar to what one might accomplish using HistoryPin; or by geo-tagging images in Flickr and then using a site like iMapFlickr or GeoSlideShow (something I dabbled in a bit, making this map of the photos of the 1913 Flood district in Dayton, Ohio).

However, the PhillyHistory.org project is just more robust, with the best of both worlds: a searchable database chock-full of useful metadata, along with photos, and mapping. And since their system is apparently ”home-grown”, they were able to make it just the way they wanted it, from the get-go. It makes me think of what could happen if CONTENTdm (with its powerful database workings and potential for granularity) and Flickr (with its geo-tagging) got together and had a baby but without any messy work-arounds. You can even view an historic photo and then click a button right on the same page to show you the GoogleMaps StreetView of the same scene.

Check out this picture of Independence Hall as an example. Pretty awesome, right?

Obviously, Philadelphia is pretty cool. But as an archivist and local history reference librarian in Dayton, Ohio….I spend a lot more time thinking about historic photographs of–you guessed it–Dayton. So of course my mind goes straight to : How cool would it be to have something like this for Dayton?  Moreover, wouldn’t it be awesome if all the institutions in the area could collaborate on something like this? Sure, it might just be a pipe dream, but it’s still fun to dream about. It would be lovely if I could search one big database to see if there are any pictures of such-and-such-a-place. (Then again, even the Philly project doesn’t claim to include all the photos of each location, of course. But hey, if I’m dreaming…I’m dreaming big.)

Honestly, we don’t usually have too much trouble helping people find photos of relatively well-known buildings in town, even if they no longer exist. I’m talking about the “big” buildings that are (or were) right downtown (or in a lot of cases, the mansions of prominent Daytonians that were there before that).

But people often — not, like, herds every day, but more than you’d think — come to the library looking for historic photos of more “ordinary” buildings, also: usually, their homes. And we have to shake our heads sadly and say, “No, we just don’t pictures of things like that, unless your house is ‘famous’,” like if the guy who owns the Bossler Mansion showed up — yeah, we probably have some historic photos of that.

But anyway, I always think to myself about the photographs in the Montgomery County Auditor’s database. I wonder how or if those photos are preserved or kept beyond their usefulness in the database itself. How often are they updated? Do they keep the old ones? Are there any prints or negatives that go along with them, or were they born-digital? 

It’s the kind of thing that gets created for a particular, immediate purpose and would get “outdated” and replaced periodically for its primary purpose…….but the older the photos get, the more “historical” they seem to become. Okay, sure, we don’t have photos of every house from 1900. But in 100 years, the photos-of-every-house-from-the-year-2000 will probably be pretty darn interesting to these house-history researchers, and it would be so lovely if we could say, “Well, we don’t have any at the library, but they have a huge archive of photographs from the Auditor’s Office, dating back to the early 2000s.” 

Honestly, I should really contact someone at the Montgomery County Records Center & Archives and ask about this, because it’s been chewing on me for a while.

*****

Anyhow… I just wanted to muse and share about some neat things I read in the American Archivist today. Hope you enjoyed the discussion.

If anyone has any legal-ese perspectives on the whole “copyright / copyfraud / what if it should be public domain but has weird terms of use restrictions placed on it?” thing, I’d be interested to hear it.

Same with the Montgomery County Auditor’s photographs. Because if those are saved along with all the other records at the MC Records Center, that’s going to be a total gold mine once the photos are old enough to make people “ooh” and “ahh” over them.

Civil War case exhibit, Bickham’s cartes de visite album

If you are interested in the Civil War and have a few minutes, please stop by the Local History Room at the Dayton Metro Library (in the basement at Main). We currently have a case exhibit (well, three cases, actually) showcasing Civil War materials from the Dayton Collection. The exhibit will be up through the end of 2011.

This is my favorite portion of the exhibit:

Civil War Exhibit, Local History Room

The young man in uniform on the upper right is Howard Forrer; the shoulder boards were his. You’ll be hearing a lot more about him in the future. (I haven’t forgotten that I promised to tell you some Civil War stories; it’s just that they’re still “stewing” and haven’t fully formed yet.)

The copy of the Dayton Daily Journal (May 6, 1863) is the first issue published by W. D. Bickham after taking over as editor of the paper, following the burning of the Journal office by a mob in response to the arrest of Copperhead leader (and Daytonian) Clement Vallandingham. (There is actually a picture of him in the case as well; I’ll share a little more about him in another post, in a day or two.)

Last but certainly not least, you’ll notice the large album at the bottom of the photo. This album belonged to W. D. Bickham and contains cartes de visite he collected during the Civil War era, many depicting famous politicians and generals. For instance, the page currently open shows off a photo of none other than President Abraham Lincoln, plus Generals Winfield Scott, Philip Sheridan, and George Thomas (all 3 on the opposite page).

The Bickham cartes de visite album is from the Bickham Collection (MS-017), which I processed. This was my first experience with this type of archival item. Obviously, I had seen cartes de visite before. I recognized them as a small, mid-19th-century type of albumen photograph. But as yet, I had only worked with family photo collections wherein all the cartes de visite were from friends or relatives. But this had to be something different; the majority of the images in the album are of famous people like Lincoln, Sheridan, Bragg, John Clem (aka Johnny Shiloh), just to name a few. While Bickham did have many famous (or later-famous) contacts due to his profession as a journalist, I seriously doubted that he had been given all of these photos personally.

As it turns out, it was extremely common during that era for people to collect cartes de visite in a manner similar to how one might collect baseball cards. The National Museum of American History at the Smithsonian has an excellent blog post ["Civil War Portraits: Where Personal and Public Meet," Oct. 3, 2011] discussing this practice. They also have a YouTube video ["Civil War Portraits: Personal and Public," Sept. 25, 2011] to go along with it. This was a great help to me in understanding what I was actually looking at, in the case of the Bickham Album.

I hope you’ll come down and see us and check out our exhibit. Although the Bickham Album is currently on display in a locked case, you can browse its contents online anytime on our Flickr page. I scanned each individual photo and added them to the set Bickham Civil War Album. There are several unidentified individuals — probably famous politicians or generals that I just don’t happen to recognize (we can’t all know everything!) — so if you see any marked unidentified and know who it is, please leave a comment to help us out.

The collections discussed here are publicly available for research at the Dayton Metro Library, Main Library, Local History Room, 215 E. Third St., Dayton, OH 45402. For more information on the collection, contact the library, or feel free to leave a comment on this blog.

The Bickham Civil War Album is from the Bickham Collection (MS-017). The Howard Forrer photograph is from the Forrer-Peirce-Wood Collection (MS-018). Other items shown are from various parts of the Dayton Collection; contact librarian (i.e., me, or the library!) for info on specific items.

Oh! One more thing:  Just so you know, I did not create this Civil War exhibit, although I did suggest the inclusion of the Bickham scrapbook and the Howard Forrer photo and shoulder boards. The majority of the exhibit (like, 99%!) was done by our lovely and talented Local History Specialist, Nancy Horlacher. The other two cases, which I have not photographed, include materials pertaining to the Dayton Soldiers’ Home and the 131st O.V.I. (a regiment made up primarily of men from Dayton).

Post-mortem photography

This might seem an abrupt change in direction, from last week’s silly and frivolous post about hotties in old photos, changing over to this week’s post to, well, dead people in old photos. But nevertheless, here we go.

(Disclaimer: I will be sharing a few examples of post-mortem photography from my own photograph collections near the end of this post. They’re not graphic at all, but if you prefer not to see any actual photos of dead people, you might want to bail before you get to the end. Let the record show that I warned you.)

Back in May when I was writing my “Hair in a Book” post (5/24/2011) about the several locks of hair I found in an old Bible, I kept coming across the term “memento mori” – which, loosely translated from Latin, means “reminder of death.” That was one of the primary reasons people kept locks of hair – as a memento of a departed loved one. That sort of memento was particularly common in the Victorian era, a time when sentimentality and high mortality converged.

Another type of memento mori was post-mortem photography; that is, photographs of deceased individuals. Now, I actually had seen some examples of post-mortem photography before (we’ll get to that in a minute), but I did not realize it was a relatively common practice (or at least, that’s what I understand to be the case based on what I’ve now read about it).

In the Victorian era, mortality rates were higher and photography was…well, it was within the reach of many but was mainly conducted by professionals. People might hire a photographer to take a picture of a deceased person who, especially if it was a child, may never have been photographed while living, so this post-mortem photo was literally their last chance for a photo of that person. We might think this seems strange today, but death was much more a part of everyday life back then. Eventually this type of photography became much less common in America by the early 20th century because the subject of death has become uncomfortable to discuss, let alone photograph.

I won’t attempt to cover all the details of the history of this custom, but if you want to know more, you may find the following sources interesting:

• “Post-mortem photography,” on Wikipedia.
• Elizabeth Kelley Kerstens, “Secure the Shadow…Ere the Substance Fades,” Ancestry Magazine 23:5 (Sept./Oct. 2005), online.
• Various works by Stanley B. Burns, including Sleeping Beauty (3 vols); here’s his web site and his blog.

According to Stanley Burns (Sleeping Beauty, 2nd ed., 1990), post-mortem photography in America in the 1930s-1940s was “mainly being done by immigrant, ethnic, and certain lower-class groups”. Furthermore, he calls the era of 1935-present “the age of amateurs” and states that “almost any aspect of funerary process, from casket to graveside, is seen.”

That pretty much sums up what I found in my grandfather’s photograph collection.

(If you don’t want to see the pictures I mentioned before, now might be a good time for you to leave.)

My grandfather was born in Italy in 1913. He immigrated to the United States in 1934. His parents had immigrated shortly before he did, and the family settled in Portsmouth, Ohio. His mother died in 1941 and his father in 1952.

Grandpa had several photographs each from both his parents’ wakes and funerals. I remember how odd I thought this was, when I saw them for the first time several years ago – when Grandpa was still alive. I had never seen these types of pictures before.

Great-grandmother's funeral, in the parlor, 1941

Great-grandmother's funeral, at the cemetery, 1941

One of the photographs from my great-grandfather’s wake even had my grandfather in it — standing next to his father’s open casket.

Grandpa and great-grandfather, funeral, in the parlor, 1952

Great-grandfather's funeral, in the parlor, 1952

Great-grandfather's funeral, at the cemetery, 1952

I wondered whether this practice had anything to do with Italian customs, since I had never seen anything like it before. Perhaps this is common in Italy, I wondered. In the case of these particular pictures, it can’t be because they didn’t have other pictures of the individual — because I have seen several other pictures of both these people, while they were alive. So I guess I just don’t know. It’s too bad I didn’t think to ask Grandpa, “What was your reason for taking these pictures?” while he was still alive. But alas, I didn’t…and in 2008, he died, also.

I wasn’t sure what the reason was for his post-mortem pictures of his parents, but I thought maybe he’d be pleased if he knew that somebody thought to take a post-mortem picture of him, too. But, like all the articles have said — and as we just sort of know — people can be weird about death, and you don’t often see post-mortem photographs anymore. So at my grandfather’s wake, I asked my father if he would mind if I took a picture — I didn’t want to weird anybody out — and with his permission, I snapped a few. Here’s one of them.

Grandpa, at the funeral parlor, 2008

I like to think Grandpa would be pleased. After all, he’s looking pretty sharp in his Knights of Columbus uniform. I have another photo in which you can see two of the Knights standing guard on either side of him. In still another, my cousin’s little boy is having a sit on the prayer kneeler…which everybody thought was pretty cute at the time. I was glad the photographing went over well with the family. I certainly didn’t want to upset anybody…but at the same time, it was one of those “last chance for a photo” moments. (Again, we have tons of pictures of Grandpa while he was living. But I just thought…in case I ever do find out there was some real significance to the photos he felt the need to take of his own parents and that maybe he would have liked one of himself, it’s not like I can go back in time and take the pictures later…)

In parting on this subject, I will leave you with the only other post-mortem photograph I have ever found (i.e., besides the ones of my great-grandparents). This one is of a tiny baby in a wooden casket — probably an example of one of those cases where no other photo of this person ever existed prior to death.

baby girl in casket

The photo is not dated, but I have guessed it was probably from the 1920s or 1930s. The writing on the back is in Italian, but I can’t quite make it out. I think some of the words must be misspelled, because I am usually pretty good with an Italian dictionary or at least Google Translator. And I’m not getting much from the words on the back of this picture, besides “povera mia” or “my poor girl”. If anybody would like to take a stab at translating it for me, let me know, and I’ll send you the image.

So…I’m curious. Has anyone else found any of these in their collections? Apparently early ones can be difficult to recognize as post-mortem photos because the subjects were often posed in lifelike positions. I’d be interesting in hearing what others have found in their collections, because as I said, until I found these in my Grandpa’s photos, I had never even heard of such a thing, let alone seen one.

** EDIT ** Here is a scan of the back side of that photograph of the deceased infant. Thanks to Theresa for offering to try and translate it for me! (I have tried myself, but I think either the handwriting or the spelling — or both — is what’s defeating me!)

Back of the Baby Girl in Casket photo