Lucille's Suitcase
Edit: (May 2012)
I submitted this post on October 31st, 2011 but I guess it didn't get approved until a whole lot later. Because of the delay, most of my photos aren't going to show up. I couldn't afford to renew my website this year. Here is a link to my photobucket album which has a lot of these pictures: http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v39/bentmywookie/Lucilles%20Suitcase/
Original Post:
Since it's Halloween, I've finally decided to share several of my antique photos with you. I know that a lot of people think that antique photos are creepy, but I think they're just poignant and tend to have more personality. This post mainly mainly contains photos that were taken around the late 19th / early 20th century, though I can't put exact dates on any of them.
One neat thing about this particular type of photograph is that it can leave its imprint upon the backs of other photographs if they're left together long enough. I call these "ghost photos." If you look closely, you can see that there's actually traces of two different photos: a child with a tricycle, and then a photo of a girl which is slanted towards the left. I'll explain more in a second.
Edit: I've added a few of the photos from my photobucket in lieu of the red x's.
Here are two more "ghost photos."
And this is one of the actual photos that caused the "ghost photo" seen above.
.....
Usually I define "found" as something with very little (or no) context or back story as to where it came from. This collection is slightly different. I know where I found it, and I know where it came from, but I don't know any of the stories behind these photos. For the most part, I don't even know who they are.
They are a small part part of the things my family acquired upon the death of my Great Aunt Lucille. She was born in 1907, and lived to be 90. She never had children, so my father and his brother (her nephews) were her only living relatives. In no particular order, all of her papers, photographs, notes and souvenirs (etc.) lived in my parents' attic for the better part of 15 years before they finally allowed me to go up there and rescue them. I didn't get to bring all of them with me, so I've only been through about half of it. I'll get the other half sooner or later.
To read more about Aunt Lucille and see some of her actual photos and journal entries, you can go here: http://lucilles-suitcase.blogspot.com/ There aren't that many entries because it turns out I'm not a big fan of blogspot.
......
Many of the people you will see here do appear in more than one photo (often at different ages) but since the majority of them are not labelled, a lot of times you just have to guess. If anything is repeated more than once in this post or it makes a reference to a photo that you don't see, it's because I've compiled this from a few different posts in my personal lj.
One of those posts has photos you won't see here, because they're uploaded to my photobucket account and I'm pretty sure it has bandwidth limits. You can click this link if you're interested, though. http://40ozslurpee.livejournal.com/710739.html#cutid1
NOW, ON TO THE ACTUAL PHOTOS! (FINALLY!)
Three of these men are fairly handsome, no?
But this one's out for your soul!! Happy Halloween!
(I know it doesn't help that there's a purple line through his face. It's not that he haunted my scanner so much as it's just old and doesn't work so well.)
This couple is trying too hard to be stylish. A lot of the women, and sometimes the children as well, have pins (brooches?) with somebody's picture on them. But why does this man have one? What do you think it's for? It doesn't look like a photo. Maybe a political campaign?
"Three Fat Aristocrats."
I know this next one isn't exactly a photo, but I've included this newspaper article because it helps identify a couple of the people you're about to see, and it also demonstrates why my family history is so confusing!! (Sorry it's such a large image, but it has to be big in order for you to be able to read what it says if you want to.)
The 11 year old kid on the right is my grandfather Kos. You'll notice here that he has 2 different last names. As an adult, his last name (as well as Lucille's) had been changed again. I wish I knew the story behind it. I've been told it was due to adoptions, but right now, I'm not sure. Here's why:
I bet you'd think that this was Harry, right? But according to the back of the photo, this is Kos Stephens Dorris. Are they identical twins? (Dad never mentioned it.) Something must be a mistake.
The back of this photo reads, "Right, Harry Dorris."
And the back of this one says, "Harry Stephens, left." So if it's marked correctly, there's two different boys named Harry who are about the same age, and poor little Kos isn't sure whose last name to take!
What makes this even weirder is that the one who looks the most like my father (who is Kos Jr.) is the one in the middle whose name isn't given. Perhaps these 3 boys are all related, but I don't know. For now, it's just weird. See why this is so hard to piece together? Your opinions are more than welcome. *head explodes*
I'm not sure if this is the store that my family owned, but it makes sense that it would be.
The yardstick says "Hargadine merchantile. St. Louis, MO." Why he's posing with it, I don't know.
One of the few photos that isn't printed or mounted on thick cardboard.
Looking rather gothic.
Pretty sure she's in more than one photo, and I know they have more than one family portrait:
See? But I still have no idea who any of them are.
Why do you suppose they're standing in straw?
Another fat aristocrat.
Edwin, Lula Mae and J W.
I suppose this is Lula Mae, who is one of the children in the previous photo.
I didn't even notice the similarity until I happened to post this photo right below the previous two. Do you think that this is Edwin or J W?
Huge dress.
Somewhat creepy siblings.
Creepier siblings. The one on the right looks like a little boy to me, but it probably isn't since (s)he's too old for the "dressing your little boy up like a girl" thing, which was popular in the late 19th and early 20th century.
The back reads "This portrait is from last summer. Edward is now in trousers." (Meaning that the youngest child is now old enough that he's no longer wearing dresses.)
Looking sad.
Pretty sure this is the same little girl as the previous photo. "She looked so sad! Let's have another one done and see if we can get her to smile."
Aww!
Chubby baby.
Chubby baby with squinted eyes.
What is this child sitting in? Is it an old fashioned stroller, or a wheelchair, or what? I've never seen a stroller like this, and I don't even know if the stroller had been invented yet. You always see photos of babies in buggies. I know that his feet look a little funny, but I think it's just his clothes because a lot of these babies look like they have flipper feet or something, so it's probably not a weird baby wheelchair.
More baby angel wing-ish fashions.
She looks strange, almost disproportionate, but it's probably just her dress.
A very fancy carriage.
A less expensive prop. Is that a chicken coop?
On another note, I found an album of photos from the '50's and there was also a photo of a baby in front of a chicken coop. I wonder if there was a book on photography tips that suggested propping your infant up in front of a chicken coop?
Fancy studio portrait. I think that most of these were studio portraits since almost all of them are on thick cardboard and most people didn't have their own cameras, but only some of them have fancy studio logos on the bottoms and on the back. Maybe it denotes a different time period, a different photography method, or just a different studio.
A photo of a baby and then the back of a different studio photo to show what I'm talking about.
And a weird Popeye baby.
I know this has a duplicate because this particular copy is torn at the corner.
She's probably just uncomfortable in her fancy clothes.
A bit different (probably more recent.) These are affixed to a thinner cardboard which folds up. When you open them, their faces are kind of stained underneath the cardboard piece, so I scanned them like this. I like it. It's mysterious.
I like these ladies. They've got style. One of them reminds me of an antique ad for Miller High Life that my parents used to have on the wall. It was classy. "The Champagne of bottled beers."
Is that a flattened football?
Mother says "no!" to football. Junior's just too fancy for ordinary rough 'n tumble play.
One of my favorite portraits. I don't know why I like this photo so much, but who wouldn't?
A wee confederate? This looks like a ghost photo, but it's just really faded.
Native American ancestry?
Big baby eyes and a little baby pinkie ring. This baby also looks Native American, but I can't tell.
Cropped the borders so you could see her face. She looks so lonely.
She looks lonely too. I put them together so they can be friends.
A very small photo. Perhaps cut and pasted on to this cardboard square. This one is kind of sad. Is this her baby, or is it a younger sibling? If it's hers, then where's daddy?
She looks suspicious, but maybe she's like me and she has a bit of a lazy eye and it's harder to tell when she's looking off in another direction.
Interesting girl, put after the previous photo because she also looks like she's suspicious of something. Maybe the photographer was sketchy.
Not on cardboard. I like the creases.
I've already said that I don't think these photos are creepy, but these are just the smallest versions. In honor of Halloween, if you care to read even more, I'm about to tell you what happens when you blow them up to life-sized. It gets spooky.
I grew up in an old plantation house on a river. It was at the end of a long dirt road which ran right through a swamp. There was Spanish moss on all of the trees and at night there were bats and owls and all sorts of spooky sounding creatures. There was even a small graveyard at the edge of the woods where a few of the house's former residents were buried.
Yep, there were definitely people buried on the property. Only a few feet away from where my dad decided to build my treehouse, no less.
So of course, I had to be the kind of child who was convinced that I could see (and talk to) ghosts. I don't know if it was real or not because even though I continue to be interested in the paranormal, being followed around by ghosts isn't something I really try to encourage in my adult life.
But why is this relevant to this photoset? Well, to make matters worse, at the height of my "ghost phase," my parents decided to decorate our hallway with giant portraits of some of the people you've just seen. And these were the kind of portraits whose eyes seemed to follow you no matter which direction you went in. Mr. John Stephens (pictured in the newspaper) presided over our living room for as far back as I can remember.
Here's a photo I took a couple of years ago. I wish I had a different angle so I could show you exactly which photos were enlarged, framed, and displayed in our hallway, but I don't. If I find one, I'll edit this post to include it. Also, at the end of the hallway was the bathroom, which had a large, ornate mirror that used to be in a bar (which was also reportedly haunted.)
As an adult, I'm honored to have such a collection bestowed upon me, regardless of whether or not some of these same folks "haunted" the hallway outside my bedroom for so many years. I hope you enjoyed seeing it. Maybe I will post more in the future.
I submitted this post on October 31st, 2011 but I guess it didn't get approved until a whole lot later. Because of the delay, most of my photos aren't going to show up. I couldn't afford to renew my website this year. Here is a link to my photobucket album which has a lot of these pictures: http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v39/bentmywookie/Lucilles%20Suitcase/
Original Post:
Since it's Halloween, I've finally decided to share several of my antique photos with you. I know that a lot of people think that antique photos are creepy, but I think they're just poignant and tend to have more personality. This post mainly mainly contains photos that were taken around the late 19th / early 20th century, though I can't put exact dates on any of them.
One neat thing about this particular type of photograph is that it can leave its imprint upon the backs of other photographs if they're left together long enough. I call these "ghost photos." If you look closely, you can see that there's actually traces of two different photos: a child with a tricycle, and then a photo of a girl which is slanted towards the left. I'll explain more in a second.
Edit: I've added a few of the photos from my photobucket in lieu of the red x's.
Here are two more "ghost photos."
And this is one of the actual photos that caused the "ghost photo" seen above.
.....
Usually I define "found" as something with very little (or no) context or back story as to where it came from. This collection is slightly different. I know where I found it, and I know where it came from, but I don't know any of the stories behind these photos. For the most part, I don't even know who they are.
They are a small part part of the things my family acquired upon the death of my Great Aunt Lucille. She was born in 1907, and lived to be 90. She never had children, so my father and his brother (her nephews) were her only living relatives. In no particular order, all of her papers, photographs, notes and souvenirs (etc.) lived in my parents' attic for the better part of 15 years before they finally allowed me to go up there and rescue them. I didn't get to bring all of them with me, so I've only been through about half of it. I'll get the other half sooner or later.
To read more about Aunt Lucille and see some of her actual photos and journal entries, you can go here: http://lucilles-suitcase.blogspot.com/ There aren't that many entries because it turns out I'm not a big fan of blogspot.
......
Many of the people you will see here do appear in more than one photo (often at different ages) but since the majority of them are not labelled, a lot of times you just have to guess. If anything is repeated more than once in this post or it makes a reference to a photo that you don't see, it's because I've compiled this from a few different posts in my personal lj.
One of those posts has photos you won't see here, because they're uploaded to my photobucket account and I'm pretty sure it has bandwidth limits. You can click this link if you're interested, though. http://40ozslurpee.livejournal.com/710739.html#cutid1
NOW, ON TO THE ACTUAL PHOTOS! (FINALLY!)
Three of these men are fairly handsome, no?
But this one's out for your soul!! Happy Halloween!
(I know it doesn't help that there's a purple line through his face. It's not that he haunted my scanner so much as it's just old and doesn't work so well.)
This couple is trying too hard to be stylish. A lot of the women, and sometimes the children as well, have pins (brooches?) with somebody's picture on them. But why does this man have one? What do you think it's for? It doesn't look like a photo. Maybe a political campaign?
"Three Fat Aristocrats."
I know this next one isn't exactly a photo, but I've included this newspaper article because it helps identify a couple of the people you're about to see, and it also demonstrates why my family history is so confusing!! (Sorry it's such a large image, but it has to be big in order for you to be able to read what it says if you want to.)
The 11 year old kid on the right is my grandfather Kos. You'll notice here that he has 2 different last names. As an adult, his last name (as well as Lucille's) had been changed again. I wish I knew the story behind it. I've been told it was due to adoptions, but right now, I'm not sure. Here's why:
I bet you'd think that this was Harry, right? But according to the back of the photo, this is Kos Stephens Dorris. Are they identical twins? (Dad never mentioned it.) Something must be a mistake.
The back of this photo reads, "Right, Harry Dorris."
And the back of this one says, "Harry Stephens, left." So if it's marked correctly, there's two different boys named Harry who are about the same age, and poor little Kos isn't sure whose last name to take!
What makes this even weirder is that the one who looks the most like my father (who is Kos Jr.) is the one in the middle whose name isn't given. Perhaps these 3 boys are all related, but I don't know. For now, it's just weird. See why this is so hard to piece together? Your opinions are more than welcome. *head explodes*
I'm not sure if this is the store that my family owned, but it makes sense that it would be.
The yardstick says "Hargadine merchantile. St. Louis, MO." Why he's posing with it, I don't know.
One of the few photos that isn't printed or mounted on thick cardboard.
Looking rather gothic.
Pretty sure she's in more than one photo, and I know they have more than one family portrait:
See? But I still have no idea who any of them are.
Why do you suppose they're standing in straw?
Another fat aristocrat.
Edwin, Lula Mae and J W.
I suppose this is Lula Mae, who is one of the children in the previous photo.
I didn't even notice the similarity until I happened to post this photo right below the previous two. Do you think that this is Edwin or J W?
Huge dress.
Somewhat creepy siblings.
Creepier siblings. The one on the right looks like a little boy to me, but it probably isn't since (s)he's too old for the "dressing your little boy up like a girl" thing, which was popular in the late 19th and early 20th century.
The back reads "This portrait is from last summer. Edward is now in trousers." (Meaning that the youngest child is now old enough that he's no longer wearing dresses.)
Looking sad.
Pretty sure this is the same little girl as the previous photo. "She looked so sad! Let's have another one done and see if we can get her to smile."
Aww!
Chubby baby.
Chubby baby with squinted eyes.
What is this child sitting in? Is it an old fashioned stroller, or a wheelchair, or what? I've never seen a stroller like this, and I don't even know if the stroller had been invented yet. You always see photos of babies in buggies. I know that his feet look a little funny, but I think it's just his clothes because a lot of these babies look like they have flipper feet or something, so it's probably not a weird baby wheelchair.
More baby angel wing-ish fashions.
She looks strange, almost disproportionate, but it's probably just her dress.
A very fancy carriage.
A less expensive prop. Is that a chicken coop?
On another note, I found an album of photos from the '50's and there was also a photo of a baby in front of a chicken coop. I wonder if there was a book on photography tips that suggested propping your infant up in front of a chicken coop?
Fancy studio portrait. I think that most of these were studio portraits since almost all of them are on thick cardboard and most people didn't have their own cameras, but only some of them have fancy studio logos on the bottoms and on the back. Maybe it denotes a different time period, a different photography method, or just a different studio.
A photo of a baby and then the back of a different studio photo to show what I'm talking about.
And a weird Popeye baby.
I know this has a duplicate because this particular copy is torn at the corner.
She's probably just uncomfortable in her fancy clothes.
A bit different (probably more recent.) These are affixed to a thinner cardboard which folds up. When you open them, their faces are kind of stained underneath the cardboard piece, so I scanned them like this. I like it. It's mysterious.
I like these ladies. They've got style. One of them reminds me of an antique ad for Miller High Life that my parents used to have on the wall. It was classy. "The Champagne of bottled beers."
Is that a flattened football?
Mother says "no!" to football. Junior's just too fancy for ordinary rough 'n tumble play.
One of my favorite portraits. I don't know why I like this photo so much, but who wouldn't?
A wee confederate? This looks like a ghost photo, but it's just really faded.
Native American ancestry?
Big baby eyes and a little baby pinkie ring. This baby also looks Native American, but I can't tell.
Cropped the borders so you could see her face. She looks so lonely.
She looks lonely too. I put them together so they can be friends.
A very small photo. Perhaps cut and pasted on to this cardboard square. This one is kind of sad. Is this her baby, or is it a younger sibling? If it's hers, then where's daddy?
She looks suspicious, but maybe she's like me and she has a bit of a lazy eye and it's harder to tell when she's looking off in another direction.
Interesting girl, put after the previous photo because she also looks like she's suspicious of something. Maybe the photographer was sketchy.
Not on cardboard. I like the creases.
I've already said that I don't think these photos are creepy, but these are just the smallest versions. In honor of Halloween, if you care to read even more, I'm about to tell you what happens when you blow them up to life-sized. It gets spooky.
I grew up in an old plantation house on a river. It was at the end of a long dirt road which ran right through a swamp. There was Spanish moss on all of the trees and at night there were bats and owls and all sorts of spooky sounding creatures. There was even a small graveyard at the edge of the woods where a few of the house's former residents were buried.
Yep, there were definitely people buried on the property. Only a few feet away from where my dad decided to build my treehouse, no less.
So of course, I had to be the kind of child who was convinced that I could see (and talk to) ghosts. I don't know if it was real or not because even though I continue to be interested in the paranormal, being followed around by ghosts isn't something I really try to encourage in my adult life.
But why is this relevant to this photoset? Well, to make matters worse, at the height of my "ghost phase," my parents decided to decorate our hallway with giant portraits of some of the people you've just seen. And these were the kind of portraits whose eyes seemed to follow you no matter which direction you went in. Mr. John Stephens (pictured in the newspaper) presided over our living room for as far back as I can remember.
Here's a photo I took a couple of years ago. I wish I had a different angle so I could show you exactly which photos were enlarged, framed, and displayed in our hallway, but I don't. If I find one, I'll edit this post to include it. Also, at the end of the hallway was the bathroom, which had a large, ornate mirror that used to be in a bar (which was also reportedly haunted.)
As an adult, I'm honored to have such a collection bestowed upon me, regardless of whether or not some of these same folks "haunted" the hallway outside my bedroom for so many years. I hope you enjoyed seeing it. Maybe I will post more in the future.