Author: admin

Down the Rabbit Hole

I chose a cabinet card photo for my second post because I want to blog in somewhat of a chronological order. Tintype photographs (shown in my last post) were the precursor to cabinet card photographs, so called because people used to display them in their cabinets.

These pictures were printed on thick card stock and used from 1870 until about 1900. The one I have shows a mother with her baby of approximately one year of age. “Ah yes”, I said knowingly. My great-grandmother Eleanor Sly was born in 1874 so this must be she with her mother, Catherine Dusinberre!

That’s when I fell down the rabbit hole.

It turns out that the Dusinberre family has a very long history in Warwick, Orange County, NY, as do the Sly family, Catherine’s in-laws as of 1868. I spent night after night into the wee hours digging up newspaper articles, census records and genealogy websites looking up our family tree.

I’m hooked, friends! I always found genealogy interesting but until I made that “discovery” I didn’t realize what kind of joy and excitement could come from pursuing it. Laugh if you will, but I feel proud like the mother in this picture and also a little dazed, like the baby:

They make a lovely pair but they are not Eleanor and Catherine. Darn it. My undoing came from the photographer’s name (which I couldn’t make out) and address printed at the bottom of the photograph.



With a little search engine magic, I discovered that Mr. Lundelius, the photographer in Port Jervis – *gasp of air* – did not open his studio until 1885. Eleanor would have been 11 years old then, far too old to match the baby in the picture.

The only other clue I have is August Lundelius’s obituary, from the Port Jervis Gazette, dated February 3, 1905. In other words, the baby in the picture would have been born some time between 1885 and 1904.

I will copy a portion of Mr. Lundelius’s obituary here for interest’s sake:

In the winter of 1885 he came to Port Jervis, and on the 22d of February of that year, Washington’s birthday, he opened a photographic gallery at No. 78 Pike Street. These rooms he occupied as a studio to the time of his death. Here he studied and worked, and developed the art which he loved so well. New features were introduced, and this gallery became one of the best known in this part of the state.


The name “Lundelius” attached to a picture was a guarantee of fine work. His studio grew in popularity, and Mr. Lundelius endeavored to keep pace with the growing demands of the public by unceasing toll, long hours and hard work. Vacations that he needed were never taken, and his only recreation was the hours with his family or with the societies of which he was a member.

It is believed this too close confinement had much to do in sapping the life functions and laying the foundation for the illness which finally proved fatal.

And…that may just be the universe tell you and I to take it easy. For my part, I will take the weekend off from ancestor hunting in order to spend time with the (living) members of my family. Meanwhile, if you recognize the people in this picture, please let me know!

New Life

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.

Ferris Dunning?

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”.

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.