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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