Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Family Photographs - Post 29: Thomas Richmond

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

Here is one of the most precious (to me) images from my Richmond family collection:


Isn't he a handsome dude? He has piercing eyes, a neatly trimmed mustache, smooth cheeks, a nice head of hair (which I didn't inherit, obviously).
This is a picture of my great-grandfather, Thomas Richmond (1848-1917), son of James and Hannah (Rich) Richmond, husband of Julia (White) Richmond, and father of my grandmother, Alma Bessie (Richmond) Seaver (1882-1962).
I don't know exactly when this picture was taken. He appears to be a fairly young man, perhaps in his 20's or 30's, which would place it in the 1868 to 1888 time frame. I have other pictures of Thomas from about 1885 here (in the James Richmond family), in about 1887 here (with his own family), and in about 1895 here (with his own family with young children). The picture above shows a much younger man than the three 1885 to 1895 pictures.
There is a good possibility that this picture was taken at or soon after his wedding to Julia White (1848-1912), which was probably in Killingly CT. However, I don't have a "companion" photograph of Julia taken at about the same time. It would be interesting to know if the clothing worn by Thomas in the picture above is typical of a certain time period - I'm not expert enough at these things, of course.
The provenance of this photograph is unclear to me. I believe that it was in the family collection that my father had from his mother, and was handed to me after 1988 by my mother. It is possible that I received a copy of it from one of my father's siblings.

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