Wednesday, June 16, 2010

(Not So) Wordless Wednesday - Post 107: Unknown Chicago Family

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I'm posting family photographs from my collection on Wednesdays, but they won't be wordless Wednesday posts like others do - I simply am incapable of having a wordless post.

I managed to scan about 100 family photographs in the Scanfest in January, and have converted the scanned TIF files to smaller JPGs, cropped and rotated as best I can. Many of these were "new" to my digital photograph collection.

Here is a photograph from the Carringer family collection handed down by my mother in the 1988 to 2002 time period:


I do not know who the persons in this picture are - but aren't they really good looking? A proud mother and her daughter and two sons (I'm assuming that, of course!). There is no writing on the back of this card.

The only real clue is that this photograph was taken in a studio in Chicago - the Wald (?) studio at 683 Wentworth Avenue in Chicago.

My great-grandparents, Charles and Georgianna (Kemp) Auble resided in Chicago in the 1898 to 1911 time frame, and my grandmother, Emily Kemp Auble, was born there in 1899. This photograph came to me through their collection.

To the best of my knowledge, the only other Auble or Kemp family residing in or near Chicago in the 1898 to 1911 time frame was that of Georgianna's sister, Sarah Elizabeth (Kemp) Cropp (1862-1929). Her husband was Andrew Cropp (1863-1920), and they had children Arley (female, born 1890), Bruce (born 1892), Warren (born 1893), Gladys (born 1899), Blanche (born 1903) and Harvey (1905-1905).

If the photograph is off the Cropp family, then it was likely taken before the birth of Gladys before 1899. However, the young lady in the picture looks older than age 8 or 9, doesn't she? The boys could be ages 6 or 7, but they look a bit older than that. It could also be that Gladys Cropp didn't survive infancy - I don't have a death date or marriage for her, so the picture could have been taken around 1903, which might fit the apparent ages of the children better.

It is very possible, even likely, that this photograph is not of the Andrew Cropp family - it could be acquaintance or friend of the Aubles in Chicago.

I guess I need to do a bit more research on the Cropp family! Chicago Genealogy website and Ancestry census records, here I come!

If anybody from this family is reading this and recognizes the persons in the picture, please contact me via email at rjseaver@cox.net.

2 comments:

Geolover said...

Randy,

The photograph was not necessarily originally ~taken~ in Chicago.

Any photographer could re-photograph an existing image and reprint it -- as in this case, mounted as a 'carte de visite' or 'cabinet card' (you don't state size) -- say, for distribution to relatives close to a person who paid for a reprinting.

The insignia of the photographic studio is that of the latest to print it, not necessarily the first.

It is a great photo, in wonderful condition :D

A rootdigger said...

Did you research this Cropp family. I have been looking at a west virginia Cropp, Presley M Cropp. His family goes back to james cropp of england. I havent found that anyone has researched further back. It isnt my tree... It's my sister inlaw's tree. I SAW hints of something at historical newspapers may 1843 and my curiosity is there to keep me going back. So if you uncover anything like this please keep me in mind.
jo arootdigger