A Late 19th Century Family

This is one of my favorite antique photos, and I'm not sure why.  It shows a man with a heck of a beard, a woman (I assume his wife) and a baby.  I always thought he was smiling at something, but it's hard to tell.  Also it's a little unusual because I'm pretty sure this was taken outside, not in a studio.

I belive this is an albumen print mounted on cardboard - and most of the mounting was trimmed away at some point in the past. 

I think it's an interesting picture.  I've had it for a long time, so maybe I'm the only one who likes it, but I find it interesting just the same.

Click on the title to go to the listing, click on the picture to bigify it.

1933 Chicago World's Fair Photo Booth Picture

At the height of the Great Depression, a woman sat down at a photo booth at the Chicago World's Fair, smiled to the camera and snapped her picture.

Her last name is McDearmid, her first name was probably Maxine, and that is all I know about her.

There was another set of these pictures, we sold on eBay several weeks ago. This one is in much worse condition, but I thought I'd give it a try.

I like this for several reasons - the major one is that it has Chicago World's Fair 1933 on it. But also just because of the picture. She's wearing ordinary clothes, smiling, young, healthy and strong back in 1933. I wonder what kind of life she lived.

If you're interested, click on the title to go to the listing.

Italia E. Evans

We came across these pictures awhile ago, and just got around to listing them. Things like this are what makes doing eBay stuff fun, at least for me.

We have a series of 5 pictures with large matting of Italia E. Evans. The pictures show her at age 10 (2), 12 (1) & 18 (2). The picture with this article is her as an 18 year old.

Her name was written in ink, in very beautiful script on 3 of the pictures. Her age was written in pencil on the back of 3 of the pictures. The photographer was "Perrey" of Ft. Wayne, Indiana. This was embossed on the matting of 3 of the pictures, and carefully handwritten on the two "18 years old" pictures.

We decided to find out what we could about Italia E. Evans, and it was a fair amount. Here goes:

She was born in January 25, 1891, most likely in Ft. Wayne. That would date our pictures to 1901, 1903 & 1909. In 1910 she was a secretary for the Ft. Wayne Anti-Tuberculosis Society. In 1914, an Italia Evans graduated from the NY Public Library School & in 1917, Italia Evans "tendered her resignation at the Ft. Wayne Public Library to enter the automobile field as a local sales rep for Detroit electric". She was also a member of the Mary Pemrose Wayne Chapter of the DAR, #75222. In 1920 she was living with her mother (O.F. born in Germany) in the 10th Assembly District of Manhattan. Her mother was apparently divorced. Sometime between 1920 & 1930 (we believe) she married an Earle Moss. We're pretty sure her grandmother was a woman named Sarah Fairfield Evans. We saw two residences for her in Ft. Wayne - 2409 S. Harrison Str., and 521 East Berry Str, but we don't know what years she lived there.

Italia Evans died in June, 1977, at age 86.

So that's interesting - a name and a photographer's location lead to all that information. My impression was that she was very intelligent, ambitious, and probably somewhere between upper middle class and outright wealthy. It's interesting that she seemed to be a career woman, at a time when most women were not. I think her family was prominent at the time.

These are beautiful pictures, and I hope whoever buys them will be very happy with them.

You can click on the title to go to our eBay listing.

Update SOLD!