The Minor Family Album closes with nine children's portraits, all of them, but one, local Green County kids photographed by Carmichaels (Pennsylvania) portrait expert, Thomas W. Rogers. The exception is found in page twenty-three's head shot of a young girl, taken by Iowan Silas T. Wiggins of Cedar Rapids, in the early eighteen nineties. To … Continue reading The Indelible Effect of a Vintage Imprint
cabinet card
Photograph as Fashion Plate: The Case of ANOTHER Unknown Woman
I have long given up on my original photographic quest. I will measure my Minor Family Album success not on how many faces I identify and claim as family, but by how much I have learned about dating old photographs and--perhaps more importantly--about converting a family heirloom into a historical artifact. So I was not dismayed when I turned … Continue reading Photograph as Fashion Plate: The Case of ANOTHER Unknown Woman
Trio Incognito: The Minor Family Album
Sometime between 1883-1888, F. P. Morgan ushered these three people into his Uniontown (Pennsylvania) studio on Morgantown Street, and shot this cabinet card photo. Their identity is concealed by the passage of time; their relationship to the Minor family of Green County lost in a historical fog. Their relationship to each other, however, is clearly … Continue reading Trio Incognito: The Minor Family Album
Brother John P. Minor
Page fifteen of the Minor Family Album holds this photograph of a middle-aged man. Shot sometime between 1888 and 1890, this portrait is yet one more mystery. An 1874 family photograph, however, has a person that is eerily similar to this guy, and on that bit of evidence I advance the likely identification … Continue reading Brother John P. Minor
On Court Avenue
The cabinet card is not quite as sturdy as one would expect from an established photographer like Benjamin E. Goldsberry, and his studio logo was stamped in haste across the bottom, leaving the green-inked words crookedly confirming the man's location--Court Avenue in Bedford, the county seat of Taylor County, Iowa. Ben Goldsberry operated cameras like an … Continue reading On Court Avenue
Shoots, Roots, and Leaves 