Bird by Bird: Hatfield Historical Museum Curator's Blog

MYSTERY 19TH CENTURY IMAGE IDed

6/3/2021

It didn’t take long. Our new website showcasing the late 19th century images of “The Lost Slides of L.H. Kingsley” was posted just a few days before our first ID came in of an unidentified slide.

I thought the shell of a large building might have been from a big city somewhere in New England. Turns out it was in our own back yard -- it’s the MAYNARD HOE FACTORY of Northampton!

On the website, which includes more than 200 images, you’ll find it under Box One – Miscellaneous, #11.

Maynard Hoe Factory, circa 1880s, by L.H. Kingsley, Hatfield Historical Museum Collection

Here’s what we learned from our researcher:

It was located about where the Smith College Faculty Club is now at the end of Green St. and just below the Paradise Pond dam. Forbes Library has a picture on its website HERE:

(As a side note, this is near where Northampton's mill was located in the 1600s.)

Here’s a shot from the other side, circa 1885, when the dam was being rebuilt, from Forbes Library's Digital Commonwealth site:

Maynard Hoe Factory, c. 1885, from Forbes Library Digital Commonwealth site

A History of the Mill River in Northampton that includes the following description of the Maynard Hoe Factory may be found HERE:

"At the Lower Mills, the site of Northampton’s first grist mill, a series of entrepreneurs from basket makers to wire factories to hoopskirt makers appeared and disappeared. The grist and sawmills of Upper Mills at Paradise Pond burned down in the 1850s, but two owners of a cutlery in Bay State, Maynard & Clement, built a large hoe factory in 1866 at Paradise Pond. The factory was plagued with financial, flood, and fire problems, and burned for the last time in 1919. A factory building remains at the Lower Mills, but there is no sign of the Hoe factory."

The following PDF identifies the location of the building on the Smith College campus.

And on this interactive website from Smith College, you’ll find three images of the factory, plus shots of what it looks like today.

Look what we have learned, prompted by L.H. Kingsley’s unidentified shell of a factory. Can you tell us about any of the other slides in the collection?

Check out the rest of the images HERE, where you’ll also find out how this treasure trove was discovered and donated back to the town where the images began.

Compiled by Kathie Gow, curator of the Hatfield Historical Museum

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Clues in the clothes: using observable details to determine rough dates for photographs

3/5/2019

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Tintypes donated by Ed & Marsha Molloy, found when living at 121 N. Hatfield St.

Guest post by Meguey Baker
Last day as Collections Assistant, Hatfield Historical Museum.
(Meg's contract has ended and we are sorry to see her go!)

One of the challenges about working in museum collections is the process of figuring out the pieces of the puzzle that you don’t have. Artifacts come in, or are found in collections, that tell a part of the story, but not the whole story. So we have to do the research we can based on the clues we have, to expand that story as far as possible without crossing the boundary into conjecture.

Photographs pose a particular puzzle, as sometimes they come in with very little evidence at all. There is only one piece of data here, the name “John” scratched into the face of the photo of the three men, with an “L” beneath it and some additional letters to the right, possibly “Sam” or “Son” or “Som”, and a very faint smudge of what might be a date.

With our modern world being so very full of cameras, on every cell phone as well as other formats, it’s worth remembering that not very long ago, getting one’s photograph taken was rather a big deal, and happened far less frequently, in part because of the trouble and expense involved. One would think that would lead to more careful notation of who is in the photo, and why it was taken; for that, I challenge you to go look at your own childhood photos and see if there is any notation on them. If there’s not, it’s a great time to grab an archival pen and add a few notes to the back; future museum workers will thank you!

Without that first-hand data, of who is in the photo, at least roughly when it was taken, and why, we are back to research and following the leads in the picture itself. When this set of photos came into the Hatfield Historical Museum, we had very little to go on, other than the house location where they were found (121 North Hatfield Road). Here’s where the research took us.

Tintypes first patented in U.S. in 1856

The first step is to narrow down the dates for the type of photograph. These are black and white (or more correctly very dark gray and cream or tan) prints on thin blackened metal sheets. Tintypes like this were first patented in the United States in 1856, but had been patented in France for a few years prior, so the technology was known by 1855. We can use that as our earliest possible circa date. The technique did not actually usually involve tin, but very thin sheets of blackened iron, cut with tin-snips.

A more expensive technique developed in the 1830s, daguerreotypes, required silver-washed copper and a protective glass cover; tintypes were cheaper and the image didn’t disappear at certain angles. If you look carefully at the photo of the three men, you can see an oval of wear on the sheet, where a frame or glass cover has rubbed at the bottom left and protected the tops of the center columns on the painted background from fading as much as the parts that would show through the frame. This also helps account for the uneven edges; it wasn’t meant to show to the edge, it was meant to be in a nice little frame, like the ‘books’ that daguerreotypes made so popular.

Given the dates of technology origin, and hazarding to guess they were taken in America, we can settle on 1855 or after for the whole lot. We could stop there! Tintypes peak in popularity just before the Civil War, but remain around up to the early 1900s, increasingly as a novelty, like photo-booth photos are today. However, if we want to try to dig a little deeper, we can examine the clothes for hints. Each era in history has at least a few distinct silhouettes, and certain things, like hoop skirts and zippers, have extremely clear start dates. Let's look at them in order, by the clues in the clothing.

The most obvious is the military attire on the two younger men. This type of button pattern, with the center line and the two outer lines that curve out from the waist and back in towards the neck, occurs in a very few places: private military academies in the 1860s, in which case there is generally a great deal of decorative braid, often in contrasting colors, and the New England Militia in the 1860s, which had no such braid.

The decorations on the young men’s jackets also include shoulder boxes, indicating they are Lieutenants in the U.S. Army, and they have inverted chevrons on the sleeve cuffs we can see -- the boy on the left has two, the boy on the right has three. If these are measures of rank, the boy on the left is a corporal and the boy on the right a sergeant. All this is slightly confusing -- how wonderful it would be if someone had taped a little note to the back of this metal plate, with the date, names and ranks of these boys on it!

Why have I switched to calling them boys, instead of young men? Look at their faces and the positioning of their bodies. These are young, very young, men. The cigar that seems reasonable in the mouth of the mustachioed man behind them looks unfamiliar in the mouth of the boy on the right, and ridiculous in the mouth of the boy on the left. The positioning of the older man’s hands on the boys shoulders is also intentional, not just to hold them steady, but to indicate relationship. Using the clues in the technology and the clothing, we can deduce a possible reason for this photo shoot: these young men are off to the Civil War, which started in 1861, and swept up so many young men and boys.

Next, let’s look at the women in the dark two-piece dresses, with tight-fitting bodices, buttons up the front and their hats on the backs of their heads. So many clues! The sleeves are very snug, but with a natural shoulder, which marks it as post-1870, as the pre-Civil War shoulder was very low off the shoulder, with a wider sleeve.

The large full skirts of the 1850s and 1860s are gone, and the buttons and trim on both women’s bodices are heavily influenced by military uniform styles. Given the very upright postures of both woman, there is boning in the bodices, and very likely short corsets.

It’s unclear if there is a bustle on either dress, but from the way the skirt on the seated woman is pulling, we can estimate the fullness of the fabric, and deduce that it’s an A-line style skirt with a ruffle at the hem, with an overskirt that adds a draped front. The rustic bench and backdrop of trees implies an outdoor theme, and so they are wearing their hats. The hats are dark straw, and have dark feathers and ribbons, secured with hat pins instead of ribbon ties. Hatpins were first made commercially in the 1850s, and widely adopted following the Civil War, remaining a constant in women’s accessories until the first World War, when the demand for metal affected every aspect of life. All of this points to a circa 1870 date for the ladies in dark hats.

The second picture of ladies in dark dresses, with a little table, shows women wearing the Basque waist, which extends below the waist down to the hips, and lends a slight forward slope to the torso. A precursor of the Edwardian S-shape torso, this silhouette has a more relaxed sleeve, a natural waist, longer boning and slightly longer skirts.

As this is an indoor setting, and these are young ladies, they have minimal hairdressing -- braids and ribbons, and white collars to set off the dark fabric. All of this points to a circa date of 1880.

The last photo (below) is significantly later, with women in separates with hats square on their heads.

There is extra fullness in the upper arm, but as it tapers to the cuff instead of going sharply from full in the upper arm and tight in the lower arm, we can date these fairly closely.

The woman on the left wears a dark skirt and light blouse, with a soft pale cravat, which points to the menswear influence of 1900. But the layers of lace on the lighter two-piece dress on the woman on the right is closer to the 1905-1910 bodice.

The light straw hats with very upright plumes in wide ribbon hat bands are very 1900s "girl-on-the-go," but hats vary dramatically as a personal expression throughout the 1890s to 1910. So, we could say that this is a picture of two friends, one of them wearing an old favorite outfit and one wearing a newer fashion, but certainly within scope of a 1905 circa date.

By carefully examining the details in the clothing, we can bring these four photos from “after 1850” to a more precise chronological timeline, and make some inferences about the people shown. Still, it would sure be helpful if there was a good clear pencil notation on the back, or notes that had come down with these over the last 150+ years.

Author
Meguey Baker studied early American textile history and material culture at Hampshire College. She is a member of the Mohawk Trail Quilt Guild, on the board of the Historical Society of Greenfield, and does textile repair and conservation for private clients.

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How to ID those mystery photos

5/31/2013

I’m guessing you have a few old family photos with no names written on the back and no one left to identify them, whether in your family’s stash of photos or in your museum’s Collection. Or maybe you have a lot. That would be true for me on both counts. But help is on the way.

Last Thursday I participated in the last of a five-class webinar called “Caring for Photographs,” hosted by Heritage Preservation (along with AASLH, IMLS and Learning Times). It was presented by Debra Hess Norris, chair of the Art Conservation Department at the University of Delaware, and a professor of Photograph Conservation. It was a great course, with all manner of practical advice about caring for and identifying old photos and negatives. If you’re interested, you will soon be able to watch any of the five sessions online and/or access the many wonderful links and resources for each one, just by going to the “Connecting to Collections” website and clicking on one of the webinar recordings.

That same evening I also started reading the book Family Photo Detective by Maureen A. Taylor, published in February, and immediately got pulled in. All I want to do now is read it!

And so it was, armed with my newfound knowledge from the webinar and a few chapters into the book, last Saturday at the Hatfield Historical Museum I was able to do some detective work of my own.

For our in-progress inventory of the Collection, we hoped to determine the age of this framed image of the Hatfield Congregational Church (built in 1849 and still serving its congregation!) and the old Town Hall next to it. (Click the image below for a larger picture.)

A note written on the back of the frame says the Town Hall burned in 1928, so I know it’s before that. But the first thing that strikes me about the photograph is that there is no clock on the tower above the bell. Since our inventory is currently working on paper-based artifacts, the church files are mostly organized and I’m able to pull out the folder of historical booklets from the Congregational Church. In the Manual of the Congregational Church, Hatfield, Mass., dated June 1918, I discover that the clock was installed in 1891, so I know it’s before that.

There is also a stamp on the back of the frame giving the photographer’s name, and the words “Artist” and “Ambrotype.” (Again, click the image below for a larger picture.)

Reverse of framed ambrotype.

From my webinar course and Maureen Taylor’s book, I’ve learned that ambrotypes (positive images on a sheet of glass) were produced between 1852/54 and 1880, so now I’ve narrowed the field to a span of less than 30 years. As I continue looking in the same Manual, I come upon the following:

“For many years an old elm, the largest tree in Hatfield, stood directly in front of the present church edifice and the tree remained standing in all its kingly beauty up to the year 1868.”

Great! That narrows it down to 1852-1868. Next I turn to the Internet to try to discover when S. Bigelow plied his trade. I don’t find much. What I do find is a blog post by “Sarah Beth” about a carte de visite by S. Bigelow, located in Collinsville, CT, and her research puts him there sometime between 1861 and 1869.

Ambrotypes and carte de visites (small photo portraits mounted on cards) were popular during the same time, so it doesn’t help narrow my search, but perhaps S. Bigelow was not doing enough business to pay rent for his “Photographic Rooms” over Polk’s drug store (see blog post above), and he hit the road, coming north through Hatfield. Do we have other ambrotypes or carte de visites in our collection by this photographer?

From the Family Photo Detective and the Internet, I learn that the U.S. government levied tax revenue stamps on all photographs from August 1864 to August 1866 to help pay for the war, and since there is no tax stamp, it was probably not taken and purchased during this time.

I could surmise further that since the church made several improvements in 1867, they might have been more inclined to record a picture of the church at that time. According to the booklet titled Two hundred fiftieth anniversary, Hatfield Church, 1920, printed by Press of Gazette Printing Company, a vestry was added to church in 1867, “at which time the organ loft was built and the present organ put in place.”

So that’s where I’ve stopped – at least for now. What I know for sure is that this ambrotype of the Hatfield church and town hall was made by S. Bigelow between 1852 and 1868. Though I’m still left with a 16-year window, I have to say I feel pretty satisfied, considering I now know the image is at least 145 years old!

If anyone out there has any additional info on S. Bigelow, ambrotype artist in the Connecticut River Valley in the 1860s, please let me know, and I’ll post any updates.

Think how fun it will be to do this for the rest of our Collection! We need more volunteers! (Or more hours in our inventory grant.) For now, I’m looking forward to reading Chapter 11 in the Family Photo Detectiveon on photograph albums, as we have at least several albums we think are from the late 1800s – with none of the photos ID-ed. But that is work and a post for another day.

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Curator's musings...

As the curator of a small town Historical Society museum, I wonder a great many things. Am I alone in these thoughts that come to me while driving, or exercising, or falling asleep at night? Is it unusual to be constructing displays and writing copy in one's head for an enlarged museum space that does not, as yet, exist?

If you're wondering about the blog title, "bird by bird," see my First Post for an explanation! Click HERE to read it.

When I'm not thinking about our museum or rehousing artifacts with my fellow museum committee members, I'm working with our exhibit committee to plan physical or virtual exhibits, and working with our board to help fundraise.

I invite your comments and reactions.

--Kathie Gow,
former curator, 2010-2021

MYSTERY 19TH CENTURY IMAGE IDed

Clues in the clothes: using observable details to determine rough dates for photographs

How to ID those mystery photos

Curator's musings...

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