Month: April 2019

It seemed like a harmless enough picture when I started looking at it. I even saw the potential there (so many names to research!) Yet this group of ladies has confounded me.

My 7-year old’s advice was to focus on what the picture shows:

1. Twenty-one ladies pose for an outdoor photograph at the home of Julia Lawrence (the back of the photo states “A Party at Julia Lawrence’s”).
2. Most ladies wear similar white dresses.
3. The lady in the middle, the only one dressed in black, looks as if she’s said something funny. She’s certainly drawn the interest of a couple of the women on the right. Also, she’s the only one looking straight into the camera. Her name is Kate Boak.

There’s no date on the back of the photograph but it’s 3 x 2 inches and mounted on heavy card stock with embossed detail around the border. That would put this party after 1890, presumably around 1900.

My grandmother’s sister, Clara, identified some of the people on the back of the card in her best chicken scratch.

1st row: Julia Lawrence, Eliza (Tuthuil?), Louise Dunning, Mrs. (?), Addie Dunning.

2nd row: Katharine Dunning, Eleanor Dunning, Kate Boak, Lou Hart, Addie Crawford.

3rd row: Mrs. Stephen Smith

Last 3 in 3rd row: Ella McEwen, Jessie Gale, Ella Brown

4th row: Mrs. Eugene Smith

For some reason or other, Julia Lawrence (born in England, and married to dairy farmer Charles F. as per the 1920 census in Walkill, NY) decided to have a party for twenty-one women friends. It was important enough of an event that someone took a photo and pasted it on a pretty matte border.

Where did they leave their husbands and children? Are they waiting off to the side? Was this some prelude to women’s suffrage, though still some twenty years away? A church garden party? Julia represented 1st Presbyterian Church at the International Convention in New York in July 1892 (as per the Middletown Times-Press) so that’s a possibility.

It’s all just speculation and…a little frustrating.

It reminded me of a book I read recently: A Heart So White, by Javier Marias. In one scene, a guard who has worked at the Prado museum for twenty-five years begins to play with his lighter near the edge of a Rembrandt painting.

My father was keenly aware that any man or woman who spent the day shut up in a room, always seeing the same paintings, for hours and hours every morning and on some afternoons, just sitting on a stool doing nothing but watch the visitors and watch the canvases (they’re even forbidden to do crosswords), could easily go mad, become a menace or develop a mortal hatred for those paintings.

The narrator’s father confronts the guard and asks him whether he really dislikes the painting so much. The guard says that he is “fed up” with it because he can’t see the face of the little girl properly. The narrator’s father explains that this is how the painting was painted, “with the fat one facing us and the servant girl with her back to us.”

The guard explains that this is exactly what is worst about the painting: “that it’s fixed like that forever”. He wants to know what happens next in the painting.

“But you know that’s not possible, Mateu,” he said. “The three figures are painted, can’t you see that? Painted. You’ve seen plenty of films and this isn’t a film. You must see there’s no way you’ll ever see them looking any different. This is a painting, a painting.”

“That’s why I’m going to do away with it,” said Mateu, again caressing the canvas with the flame from the lighter.

I got more and more infuriated as I searched each name in this photograph. “Lou Hart”, “Mary Lou Hart”, “Louise Hart”, “Mrs. Hart”, ” & Middletown”, “& Orange County”, on and on I went trying to divine the purpose of the party, or some connection between the women other than simple proximity.

Then I’d look at the photo again and there the ladies were, just sitting there in the same pose with that Kate Boak staring at me (is she smirking?) It did sort of make me want to set fire to the whole thing!

Then again, why the frustration? The guard goes mad asking “what happens next?” but he’s asking for something impossible and I was doing the same thing. I understand now that you can’t undertake a genealogy project expecting every picture to be part of a grand story about your past. Sometimes the answers just aren’t there.

The photos are fixed. Whether or not someone has labeled the people on them, or the place, that’s fixed. The person searching, though, is only ‘fixed’ if he insists on answering one narrow question (i.e., “why did they have this party?”) and not the million other questions that could be asked. You’re only stuck – in research and in life – if you don’t open yourself to other possibilities, to other ways of framing your situation.

My new way going forward will be to listen to my 7-year-old (at least on this point!) It was a party at Julia Lawrence’s. Twenty-one women sat down on the grass, smoothed their long skirts out and saved the moment forever.

My great-grandparents married on New Year’s Day, 1906. Here are a few things that happened the prior year, to put that into perspective:

1. March 17, 1905: Albert Einstein introduces the Theory of Relativity. Eleanor Roosevelt and Franklin Delano Roosevelt marry.
2. September 5, 1905: Treaty of Portsmouth brings an end to the Russo-Japanese War. (President Theodore Roosevelt crucial in those negotiations).
3. October 5, 1905: The Wright Brothers’ third airplanes stays in the air for 39 minutes.

As for women’s fashion, you can see that high collars, frilly blouses, long skirts and cinched waists are in. Hair is worn in the “Gibson Girl” bun and smiling for pictures is out.

I’m kidding about the smiles but, truly, this would be a “do over” picture if taken today. Only three of the bridal party are even looking at the camera and the bride and groom are in the far back, covered by shadows.

This makes me appreciate the picture even more, in a way. These days wedding photos are highly curated with the bride as the center of attention. Here it’s an imperfect family affair. My great-grandmother didn’t spend hours debating which pictures to put in the album: this was it!

I can’t identify everyone but the little girl in front is Evelyn Sly, presumably with her parents behind her. Cousin Flora Sly stands on the right side with (I think) her husband. The lady with glasses is the groom’s sister, Louise Dunning. It sounds confusing but fear not! I’m working on a family tree for the blog to help sort out all these relatives.

To my delight, the marriage was written up in the Orange County Times on Friday, January 5th, 1906.

HYMENEAL

Dunning – Sly

(From our Amity Correspondent)

A quiet home wedding took place at the residence of Mrs. Jacob Sly, of Florida, on New Year’s Day, at high noon, when her only daughter, Miss Eleanor Dusenberre, was joined in marriage to Merit Emmit, third son of Horace Dunning, of Middletown, by Rev. Dr. Robert Houston Craig of Amity, pastor of the bride, assisted by Rev. Walter Rockwood Ferris, of Middletown, pastor of the groom.”

A number of phrases from this article make me chuckle, starting with “high noon”. If you’re like me, the phrase sounds more like the hour for a cowboy shoot-em-out. Pre-1950’s, though, this was a perfectly reasonable phrase for “mid-day”. (It may also have signified the ‘zenith’ of their relationship together).

I dutifully researched Rev. Dr. Houston Craig and found that he served at Otisville Presbyterian Church starting in 1875, and moved to Amity Presbyterian Church by 1902. Meanwhile, Rev. Rockwood Ferris became the minister of First Presbyterian Church in Middletown, New York from 1902-1908.

I love the idea that both pastors were invited to their wedding; clearly these were important people in my great-grandparents’ lives. What’s more, Merit Dunning’s son is “Walter Ferris” so – unless of some extraordinary coincidence – it appears that he named his first-born son after his pastor!

The ceremony was performed with a ring. Only the members of the two families were present.

The bride looked charming in a traveling suit of blue broadcloth. She carried a boquet of white roses.

The bridal couple left early in the afternoon by carriage to Goshen to board the express on their bridal trip.

Here I laughed at “the ceremony was performed with a ring” because it seemed obvious. Little did I know that the diamond wedding ring only became a ‘thing’ after a big De Beers campaign in the 1940s. Also, the fact that their big honeymoon getaway possibly took place on an express train to Manhattan made me pause. (My daily experience on that train is far from an idyllic excursion).

The groom is prominently connected in Middletown and is a ruling elder in the First Presbyterian Church of that city, and the bride is a most estimable young lady related to all the Sly and Dusenberre families in this locality.

Many beautiful, valuable and useful presents were sent to the bride by the many relatives and friends of both bride and groom.
The home was tastefully decorated with evergreens and potted plants, and the wedding breakfast served by Mrs. Sly was sumptuous.

The fact that the decorations were “evergreens” (Christmas decorations?) and “potted plants” (overwintering?) made me smile. Then I checked out Eleanor Roosevelt’s wedding announcement from the New York Times where “the house was decorated throughout with ferns, palms, and pink roses.” If it’s good enough for the Roosevelts…

In sum, a limerick:

Should you wed in ’06 what a cinch
No hall and no band must you clinch
Just a pinching of waist
As mom’s breakfast you taste
But money? You won’t waste a pinch!

Waaaaaa! Waaaaaa! Did you hear that? It’s the sound of my blog being born. My feisty baby has finally taken its first breath, made its first coo, looked me lovingly in the eyes as if to say, “thank you, mom”.

And look at you! There you are beside me telling me what a good job I’ve done, what a beautiful thing we now share between us. Maybe it’s the anesthesia but I swear I’ve never felt so close to you.

Babies are the beginning, not least where genealogy is concerned. They start the family tree and keep it growing. I have chosen these baby photos for my first post because, as tintype photos, they may be some of the oldest records I have of our family.

The only trouble is that, since no one could scrawl any identification on the back of the metal plate (and since no one chose the “Baby Elvira III” hoodie for the shoot) I am somewhat at a loss as to whom we are looking at. I suspect that these may be my grandmother’s brother, Ferris Dunning and her sister, Clara Dunning for a couple reasons.

First, the technology of the tintype photograph became popular in the 1860s and lasted through 1900 or so, according to this article.

Clara and Ferris were born in the early 1900’s but the two babies look like siblings and, given that the dress and the chair they’re sitting on look the same, it would be fair to assume that they had the pictures done at the same time. More convincing, the baby below looks just like later pictures that my grandmother has clearly marked “Clara Dunning”.

These babies passed away long ago yet here they are – present – starting out at us. It’s not hard to imagine a great-grandmother picking them up in her arms to hurry them off to the photographer. She would have had to shimmy that white dress over their heads, prop them on the chair, and say “no cheese!”

If we look at these photos now and imagine that scene, don’t they come back to life in some way? Isn’t that why we continue to share stories of loved ones who have passed – so that they can be together with us again, even if just in memory?

Yesterday happened to be an unseasonably warm day in New York. Our family ventured outside for what seemed to be the first time in ages. We collected all the fallen branches and started the hard work of clearing off the gardens.

What good therapy it is to rake dead leaves off a spring garden showing the first signs of life. Every knobby green tip you “rescue” from under the mulch makes you feel like a plant hero. Yes! It’s a thrill to uncover something hidden, and even better if the uncovering allows it to grow and bloom.

Tucked in an album under my bed, the ancestors were as “dead” as could be. By taking them out and trying to retell the story (however imperfectly), I’m trying to let them breathe again. Or wear that uncomfortable bonnet and jacket get-up one more time, as the case may be. I can’t tell how at this point, but I have faith that ‘tending the family garden’ will bring some kind of new life to us.