Showing posts with label History. Show all posts
Showing posts with label History. Show all posts

We're All Mad Here...

Alice in Wonderland has always been my favorite fairy tale. ❤️ When I was a kid I was obsessed with the TV movie. 


I'd play dress up in one of my old Christmas dresses, a red & white polka dot dress, similar to the one TV Alice wore, and when my Mom was in the kitchen I'd jump off the stairs onto the sofa below, pretending I was Alice falling down the rabbit hole, my dress puffing out like a parachute. 😂 

(Photo of me in my red dress from 1988.)


I've been looking for an antique copy of Alice in Wonderland and was lucky enough to find a 1920 copy from a shop in the UK for $16! 


The dodo bird illustration was always one of my favorites. I was terrified of the Cheshire Cat as a kid, but I love him now. 





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CDV: (1895-1897) Girl with her Bicycle

I apologize, this photograph has been sitting in my draft posts for about a year. It is of a teenage girl around late 1800's. I love her puffed sleeves, it gives me Anne of Green Gables vibes. (Anne so wanted a dress with puffed sleeves!)

Speaking of which, did anyone see the Netflix series Anne with an E? I'm super disappointed it was canceled in Season 3, it was such a good show with great actors! The girl who played Anne, (Amybeth Mcnulty) was the entire essence of who Anne of Green Gables was! It was a Anne for this century covering multiple issues: bullying, abuse, racism, feminism, LGBT+, etc. I'm a sucker for any historical drama and I'm really sad it was canceled. (Maybe, sign the petition fans have created to bring the show back!)

I purchased this CDV off eBay from a seller in England. There was no info on the back, but her clothing suggests late 1800's, possibly 1895-1897. Her outfit is actually made for cycling! I recently obtained a reprint of the 1897 Sears, Roebuck & Co catalog and I've scanned a few pages from that (below) showing all the bicycle equipment you could buy in 1897. 


Outfits for cycling. Gentlemen had their own outfits, with knicker shorts. The bicycle suit for ladies had a skirt that was shorter than the dresses they would wear every day.

A few of the ladies bicycles for sale in the 1897 Sears, Roebuck & Co catalog. 

The lamp on the bicycle in the photograph is a carbide lamp. You can see some similar ones for sale in the 1897 catalog, it was fueled with acetylene gas. A few models (above) in the Sears catalog were fueled by kerosene. 
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RPPC: Pets in the early 1900's.

Please see my previous post Pets in the 19th Century for even more photographs!

These are both antique photo postcards (RPPC) from around the early to mid 1900's that were each purchased at separate times. Both postcards were blank on the back so I have no way of properly identifying the people in them. It's lovely to see pets were cherished members of the family even 100 years ago. 

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CDV Photographs: Pets in the 19th Century

In some of the more rare carte de visite photographs, owners posed with their pets. These are a few CDV & cabinet cards with animals that I've collected. 
 CDV photo circa 1870-1880. Posing with their pet pony/horse. 
CDV Photo circa 1870. Posing with her little dog. 
CDV Photo circa 1880. Mummy & Fluffy is written on the back,
the other writing is hard to make out.

CDV Photo circa 1880. A photo anomaly: the dog moved in her lap as the photo was taken
and his head appears to be missing!
Cabinet Card. Photo circa 1870-1880. Posing with her dog. 
If you were ever curious of the size difference between a Cabinet Card and a Carte de Visite, you can see here how much larger the Cabinet Card is next to the CDV. 
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CDV Photograph: Pince Nez Glasses 1870-1880

While looking for CDV (carte de visite) photographs, I noticed all the wacky antique glasses people used to wear. I made it my mission to try and obtain one for my CDV album and my patience paid off recently when I was able to get this photograph.

The photo is circa 1870-1880, and the studious girl from Massachusetts is wearing a pair Pince Nez glasses. There would have been a chain and a clip to secure to her dress and the glasses stayed on by pinching the bridge of her nose. While they definitely don't look very stylish today, I'm sure they were popular back in the day.


Here's an example of antique Pince Nez Glasses from Pinterest:

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Post Mortem CDV: Nevada G Estes & Baby John 1880

I'm still collecting carte de visite photographs, otherwise known as CDVs. There's certain subjects I've especially been trying to collect, including a post mortem.

Post-Mortem photography
was very common back in the 19th century and while it may seem distasteful or creepy to us nowadays, it was quite normal in the 1800's. Photography was rare and often expensive. Back then the only photograph you owned would most likely have been your wedding portrait; s
o often, a post mortem was the only photograph of a loved one that a family may have had to remember them by, if they passed away.  

I was intrigued by this particular photograph because of the name scrawled on the back:



I did some digging on Ancestry.com and discovered Nevada G Estes (born 1851), was married to John W Estes. In the 1880 Missouri census, they had a little baby, John Estes who was 7 1/2 months old at the time and is listed as being born October 1879. 



Unfortunately there were no records for the 1890 census, as the records were destroyed in a fire. 

The next census that showed Nevada and her husband was in 1900. (Their surname was misspelled on the census, which is quite common when you start looking into census records). Little John Estes is no longer listed in the household. Instead James H Estes, who was born in 1886 is listed as their living son. James, passed away in 1929.


From looking at other records, it appears Nevada had 7 children over her lifetime
, but only 3 lived. Only James Henry is listed on findagrave.com, but I was finally able to link little baby John Estes to his mother's memorial page. His grave is unknown.

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Finding out Linthicum Maryland is named after my ancestors.

My 6 month Ancestry membership expired today (and no, this isn't an advertisement post). I've spent the past year researching my family tree and genealogy more deeply. I've found a lot of interesting facts about my ancestors, took the Ancestry DNA test, and even found some skeletons in the closet! The earliest ancestors I've been able to trace, actually have a community named after them: Linthicum, Maryland! 

Linthicum
was my late Nana's maiden name. Her father Dabney Linthicum was descended from a line that goes all the way back to 1658, when Thomas Linthicum Sr. arrived in America and settled in Maryland, Anne Arundel County. He passed away in 1701. Through his son Thomas Jr. our line descended: 

  • Thomas Linthicum Jr. 
  • Edmund Linthicum Sr.
  • Edmund Linthicum Jr. 
  • John T Linthicum
  • William H Linthicum
  • George W. Linthicum (My Great Great Grandfather)
  • Dabney O Linthicum (My Great Grandfather)
  • Dabney's Daughter: Dorothy V. Linthicum, (My late Grandmother)
(My public ancestry family tree can be found here).

Neat Facts:

  • John T Linthicum married Francis Dabney in 1816. Her maiden name later became my Great Grandfathers first name.
  • Hill C Linthicum the brother of my great great grandfather George Linthicum, was a famous Architect in Virginia and North Carolina.
  • There's a genealogy book: Geneology of the Linthicum and Allied Families that was published about the Linthicum Family in 1936, written by Matilda P Badger.
  • Our family is distantly related to Johns Hopkins, Philanthropist. We share the same early ancestor Thomas Linthicum Sr. Only his line was through Thomas's daughter Mary. Our line is through her brother Thomas Jr. (Page 83 in the Linthicum Genealogy book).
My Great Grandfather: Dabney O Linthicum & Great Grandmother: Nellie Capper.
My Nana Dorothy V Linthicum as a teenager, with her Mother Nellie.
The earliest record I've found of Thomas Linthicum Sr, a document stating Edward Selby transported Thomas here on a ship to Maryland from England in 1658. I'm not sure if Thomas was indentured to Edward. (The Linthicum surname was also spelled Lincicomb, Linscombe, etc; in old records).

The burial record of Thomas Linthicum Sr in 1701.
My Grandmother Dorothy V Scaife (d.2014
& my Grandfather William.

Pictures of me with my Grandmother 
& Grandfather over the years.

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