Recently, I’ve been hearing and reading that it’s possible to find family-related items on eBay just by searching either on a surname or location. So I thought I’d give it a try. I didn’t have much luck searching on surnames but I did have some luck searching on place names.
The first item I located was a postcard of Hudiksvall, Sweden – where my Swedish great grandparents Andrew and Brita Dalin lived before they came to the U.S., and where Andrew was most likely born.
I asked my husband, who has some knowledge of vehicles, if he could date the postcard based on the car coming down the road. He thought the earliest date could be about 1935. Although my great grandfather was born much earlier in 1859, it was still fun to find this image of a street scene – possibly a street my ancestors may have walked down.
I also found a great magazine article about the mining town in Montana where my great grandfather David Lyman Blacker and his partner John Keating had their first mining success in 1866 – and where my great grandparents David and Ada lived until they moved to Helena in late 1882, early 1883.
The real bonus came when I actually located several references to my great grandfather and his partner Keating in the article, although my great grandfather’s name is misspelled as “Blackner” – which explains why the surname search was unsuccessful.
And here I’d like to give a special “thank you” to Tom Russell who dedicated his retirement to searching for and acquiring items related to “Old Western History and Memorabilia”. Then he spent hours indexing articles like this one and posting them on eBay for some lucky family historian like me to discover. Sadly, Tom passed away in 2014 but his daughter Debbie continues to post and sell his items on eBay. Thanks, Tom and Debbie!
Everybody should try searching eBay. You never know what you might find!
This blog post is Part 2 of “Who is the woman in this photo?” Click here to read Part 1.
For starters, I’ve re-posted the photos discussed in Part 1 which I will continue to discuss in Part 2.
Photo #1, date unknown but estimated early 1880s to early 1890s
Photo #1 (back)
Photo #2
Photo #2 (back)
Photo #3
Photo #3 (back)
The next two steps involve my attempt to identify the type of photography and clothing style in order to place the photos in a particular time period.
STEP #1 – Identify and date photo type
With the help of this great website, PhotoTree.com, it was fairly easy to determine that all three photos are “carte de visite”, otherwise known as “CDV”. First appearing in 1859, CDV was the first process to use a glass negative – which meant that customers could afford to purchase several copies for sharing with family and friends.
Some hallmarks of CDVs are –
Size: Typically 2 3/8″ x 4 1/4″, although the size may vary up to 1/4″.
Corners: Square corners until 1870, then rounded corners.
Image size: The more the image fills the card, the later the date. By 1874, the image completely filled the card.
Thickness: Early cards were very thin but became thicker by 1870 and even thicker by 1880.
Conclusion: Since all three photos measure roughly 2 3/8″ x 4 1/4″, have rounded corners, large images, and the cards are very thick (although Photo #2 is thicker than the other two), it’s likely that Photos #1 and #3 are dated sometime after 1874 and Photo #2 after 1880.
STEP #2 – Identify and date clothing style
Next, I did some research regarding women’s fashion styles of the 19th century and came across this interesting article on the history of fashion, 1840-1900. The description of clothing in the 1880s seemed to be the closest match – tightly fitted bodice with narrow sleeves and high necklines.
Dresses in the prior decade (1870s) had more “flounces” and “ruching”, and low necklines were fashionable. By contrast, dresses in the next decade (1890s) were similar to the 1880s, except that the sleeve shape began changing in about 1893 – tight at the lower arm and puffed out at the upper arm.
Conclusion: Based on women’s clothing styles, Photos #1 and #3 are likely dated anywhere from the early 1880s through the early 1890s.
And then it happened – The “Ah Hah Moment!” when I realized that placing Photo #1 in the early 1880s through the early 1890s time frame meant that the woman in Photo #1 could be Brita. And if the woman was Brita, the small boy could be her son John. And perhaps John is also the boy in Photo #2?1
STEP #3 – Locate a record for “John”
I decided it was time to try and find some type of record for John. And I really lucked out here. It turned out Ancestry had recently acquired some Swedish records, so I easily located a birth record which I wrote about here – showing there was a baby boy named “Johan”, born to an “Andrew Dalin” and “Brita Johansdotter” in Hudiksvall, Sweden in 1887.2
Finally, everything seemed to be falling into place. My father’s story about the little boy named John appeared to be validated – and as a bonus, assuming the birth record is valid, I had possibly located a record indicating that Brita’s maiden name was “Johansdotter”.
STEP #4 – Now what?
I wasn’t sure what to do next – but as luck would have it, I came across the name of a woman who specializes in helping people analyze their family photos. Her web site is The Photo Detective and her name is Maureen Taylor. I scheduled a phone appointment and then emailed the following three photos:
Photo #1, date unknown but estimated early 1880s to early 1890s
Photo #2, ca. 1910
Photo #3, date unknown
All the information I had about Photo #1 has been previously stated. Here’s some information about the other two photos:
Photo #2:
The boy in the front row, Walter Dalin, was the son of Andrew and Brita Dalin.
At least one of the other two girls, and possibly both, are daughters of Andrew and Brita.
The man second from the left in the back row is probably Andrew and the woman standing next to him is probably Brita.
Photo #3:
Several family members have identified this woman as Brita Dalin.
The handwriting on that photo appears to be Brita’s handwriting (based on a few other examples of her handwriting).
This is the end of Part 2. Part 3 includes a report on my phone call with Maureen. Stay tuned!
Copyright (c) 2016, Lark M. Dalin Robart
FOOTNOTES
As for Photo #3, I decided for the time being to set it aside because I am unable to place this family – presumably a family consisting of a wife and husband with two children (girls, boys or one of each??) – in any scenario, given the information I currently have for Brita and Andrew. Assuming this photo was taken during the same time period as Photo #1, the only scenario of which I can currently conceive is that the adult female or adult male is a sibling of either Brita or Andrew. Another research project for another day. ↩
Sweden, Indexed Birth Records, 1860-1941, digital images, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 04 April 2016), “Swedish Church Records Archive; Johanneshov, Sweden; Sweden, Indexed Birth Records, 1880-1920; GID Number: 100021.2.24500; Roll/Fiche Number: SC-1110; Volume: :937; Year Range: 1888, Johan Lars Anders Dahlin entry. ↩
After several years of research and a recent phone session with The Photo Detective Maureen Taylor, I now believe that the woman in this photo, dated about 1890, is probably my great grandmother Brita Johansdotter1 Dalin and her son Johan.
As to her maiden name, my current thinking is that it is probably “Johansdotter”. This issue is discussed in more detail in Part 3 of this blog post. ↩
The story my father told me so long ago about his grandparents Andrew and Brita Dalin left me with two mysteries – well, at least two. The first is the mystery of Brita’s maiden name. I remember my father saying, “Well, it was something like Anderson or Johnson – I think.” In all my years of research, I’ve managed to narrow it down (if you can call it that) to either: Continue reading →
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The real bonus came when I actually located several references to my great grandfather and his partner Keating in the article, although my great grandfather’s name is misspelled as “Blackner” – which explains why the surname search was unsuccessful.
