Thursday, July 31, 2008

Is this Isaac and Lucretia (Smith) Seaver?

Sometimes you get lucky... and friends help you out. I posted "When was this picture taken?" in July 2007 about a Union case received with my Aunt Geraldine's treasures. I speculated that it was taken in the 1860's, and perhaps was Isaac (1823-1901) and Lucretia (Smith) (1828-1884) Seaver. Isaac Seaver is my only ancestral Civil War soldier.

Recently, I took a photograph of the Union Case pictures instead of scanning the case itself, which turned out rather badly (see the earlier post). The digital photograph turned out fairly well after cropping:



In the mean time, Sally Jacobs posted this morning "Learning to date old photographs" (which she originally posted a year ago), linking to my earlier post.
Maureen Taylor, the Photo Detective, saw Sally's post and looked at my earlier post, and commented on it:
"Hi Randy! The woman's dress and the man's attire suggests it was taken in the 1850s. The image itself doesn't look reflective so it's either an ambrotype or tintype. This narrows the time frame to after 1856 to c. 1860.
"Your scanner read the glass rather than the image. One of my Epson scanner's does that and the other doesn't. Caught your posting due to the Practical Archivist."
I'm about 90% sure that the pictures are of Isaac Seaver and Lucretia Smith. If so, it would have been handed down to Isaac's son, Frank Seaver, to his son Fred Seaver, and to his youngest daughter, Geraldine (who was the companion for her mother until her death in 1963). The other candidates are (assuming the photograph was taken in about 1860 and the subjects are aged 20-40 years old):
* Edward (1831-1899) and Sophia (Newton) (1834-1923) Hildreth, who resided in Leominster MA.
* Henry (1824-1885) and Amy (Oatley) (1826-1867) White, who resided in Killingly CT.
Thank you to Sally and Maureen for taking the time to help me out. It's great to have experts analyze my puzzles!

1 comment:

Sally J. said...

Randy, who knew my Ann Landers decision to run an old post would have such wonderful consequences?

Hooray!