Sepia Saturday: From the Campbell Studio

Sepia Saturday challenges bloggers to share family history through old photographs.

During the month of March, I will be shining the light on my Irish roots.

I have the perfect match for this week’s Sepia Saturday prompt which features two boys: one in a sailor suit and the other sporting an Eton collar.

This photo is from the many photos passed down to me from my grandaunt Helen Killeen Parker. I really do not know who these boys are, but I have a pretty good guess.

Since Helen had only one brother, I concluded these boys were not sons of my great-grandmother Mary Theresa Sheehan Killeen. I considered that maybe the boys were her nephews, sons of one of her sisters living in New York City. However, upon close inspection of the cabinet card, I saw the name and location of the photographer: Campbell, Norfolk, VA. 

Closeup snip of the photographer's mark

I thought finding Mr. Campbell would help me date the photos, thereby narrowing the field of candidates for the game known as “Name that ancestor.”

It took some digging to find a photographer named Campbell in Norfolk. Two interesting images came up:

Photos of Jack Wentz (2nd base) and George Nie (catcher)
Campbell Studio 1897

Pitchers Fritz Clausen and Doc Secrist
Campbell Studio 1897

These two sets of cabinet cards of baseball players were sold at different auctions. Maybe it was the rarity of the subjects, the baseball history, or even the obvious clarity and skill of the photographer that drove the prices to $657 in 2016 for Fritz Clausen and Doc Secrist, and $1320 in 2018 for Jack Wentz and George Nie. These men played for the Norfolk Jewels from 1896-1898, at least.

Does the photo of the children exhibit the same skill and quality?

The photographer’s mark is not the same, and there is no mark on the back at all, not like the fancy ad on the reverse of the baseball players’ photos. 

Back of the photos of Wentz and Nie

It would be helpful to know whether my photo was an earlier or later work of Campbell Studios. So, I checked the newspapers looking for ads.

B. S. Campbell promoted himself frequently in the local Norfolk newspapers from 1886 to 1903, and maybe longer than that but these are the dates that came up most often on GenealogyBank and Newspapers dot com. He offered special sales at Christmas and Easter. He sold frames. He promised to retake photos free of charge if customers were not satisfied with the proofs.

Campbell also developed special techniques using watercolors and pastels to make a photo look like a painting, or at least that is my interpretation of what the news reporter described in a news feature. Campbell did not know what to call this technique, so he invited the public to submit suggestions.

Many articles written about him praised the quality of his photography, often quoting big-name art dealers from New York City. He won many awards.

Unless Mary Theresa was extra chummy with a friend or neighbor, it is not likely she would have received such a fine photo from one of them. It is more likely the photo was a gift from a relative. Given the dates when B. S. Campbell seemed most active in his profession, I believe the photo dates around 1900. Maybe the boys were sons of Mary Theresa’s sister-in-law and brother-in-law, Bridget and John Joseph Glynn. Bridget was the sister of Mary Theresa’s first husband. They lived in Portsmouth, just a ferry ride across the Elizabeth River to downtown Norfolk where B. S. Campbell had his studio.

Matthew was born in 1891 and John Jr in 1893. Do they look 9 and 6 in the photo? Maybe 8 and 5? 7 and 4?

Am I even close to identifying these children?

Visit Sepia Saturday for more photos and stories of twosomes.

Wendy

© 2021, Wendy Mathias. All rights reserved.

Sepia Saturday: The Merchant

Sepia Saturday challenges bloggers to share family history through old photographs.

Pictures like this week’s Sepia Saturday prompt can be a real time-suck for me because I find myself Googling to identify the model of the cars, to determine whether products like Meadow Gold milk and butter are still available, and to find old photos of buildings identified by their signage. It’s a handsome photo, one with which I cannot compete. I have grocery stores and grocers in the family, but most have already been introduced on my blog. The good news is I still have one more. The bad news – and it’s really not that bad – is that he isn’t family.

When Barry and I were planning our wedding in 1973, the FOLK WEDDING was the rage. I guess it grew out of the “Make love, not war” / “Do your own thing” attitudes of the 1960s-early 70s. Less formal than traditional wedding ceremonies, the folk wedding often included folk tunes accompanied by guitar. So I needed a singer. And a guitar. My aunt, my dad’s sister, suggested Joanie Glynn. What? Who? “You know – the Glynns. They’re cousins,” she said and Daddy confirmed.

I’ve gone years just accepting that the Glynns are our cousins. I figured they must be those distant cousins, those 2^nd or 3^rd cousins that no one really gets to know. When I actually did the research, I saw almost immediately that they are not MY cousins at all. They are not my aunt’s or dad’s cousins either. They are not even my grandmother’s cousins. The Glynns are cousins of my grandmother’s HALF-siblings. My great-grandmother married twice; my family descends from the second husband. The Glynns are related to the first husband, the OTHER side of the family.

So here is John Joseph Glynn. 

John Joseph Glynn (1862-1942)
probably Matthew C. Glynn  (1891-1969)

John Joseph Glynn was born to Michael and Mary Irwin Glynn in Ireland in 1862, immigrated to the United States in 1884, and in 1890 married Bridget Mary Killeen, sister of John Joseph Killeen, my great-grandmother’s first husband. John Joseph Glynn and John Joseph Killeen – try keeping that straight. I guess the Irish did not have much imagination when it came to naming babies.

Bridget Mary Killeen Glynn (1863-1948)
either John Joseph Jr or Ellen Frances

John and Bridget were in Virginia by 1890 as all 6 children were born there between 1891 and 1910. John operated a grocery store at the corner of Henry and Second Streets. In the 1900 and 1910 census, they lived on Second. In later censuses, they lived on Henry. In every census except 1940, John was enumerated as a grocer or merchant. City directories through 1935 also show him as a grocer. By 1936, he was retired.

 

Portsmouth City Directory 1935

Photo albums that I have inherited from my Killeen aunts Helen and Lillie reflect the closeness of the Killeen and Glynn families.

 

September 1931
Bridget, John Joseph,
daughter Ellen, aka "Nell"

Captioned "Brothers"
possibly John Joseph Jr and Matthew
but assumed age difference is too much

Lillie Killeen with cousins
William and Margaret Glynn

"Cousin Nell"

That's cousin Nell on the right - not sure of the other 2

I have the Glynns to thank for my very existence. My great-grandmother Mary Theresa Sheehan Killeen had planned to be a New Yorker until John Joseph Killeen died in 1905 leaving her a widow with 5 children to raise. Her sister-in-law Bridget Killeen Glynn persuaded her to come to Portsmouth to be with family. According to family lore, it was Bridget who introduced Mary Theresa to her future second husband John Fleming Walsh. And as they say, the rest is history.

I’ll say this though about the Sheehan-Killeen-Walsh group, they did not and do not discriminate based on a last name. Family is family. A cousin is a cousin regardless of DNA.

There is more in store at Sepia Saturday.

Wendy

© 2020, Wendy Mathias. All rights reserved.

Sepia Saturday: 2 Kids and a Pony

 Sepia Saturday challenges bloggers to share family history through old photographs.

This week’s Sepia Saturday photo of a postman delivering the mail via horse and cart reminded me of this studio photo:

It is glued onto the black paper quickly chipping away in my grandaunt Helen Killen Parker’s photo album. The two children are just another of the hundreds of mysteries and unidentified friends and family gathered in photo albums and shoeboxes. Studying the faces, enlarging the photo, reviewing family units, and comparing to other photos have produced little to help me draw any conclusions about this charming pair.

The only REAL clues lie in the other photos on the 2-page spread.

On the same page is this phuzzy photo:  

Are they the same children a few years later?

The other photos are just chips, maybe half inch wide by 1”-1.5” long like this one:

The photos seem much older than others that Helen may have taken herself, so I wonder if the photos belonged to her mother Mary Theresa Sheehan Killeen Walsh. Maybe the pictures are of her as a young girl. However, she had at least 2 brothers and 4 sisters, so a photo of just 2 children does not seem likely. Nor does it seem likely she would have had a professionally-produced photo of only two of her own 8 children.

Another thought that just today occurred to me is that maybe the two children are Helen’s father John Joseph Killeen and his sister Bridget as children. That certainly matches the family makeup. Do the photos look like they date from the 1870s-early 1880s when they would have been children in Ireland?

What about this photo of a young boy with cow? The boy certainly resembles the child in the cart. Is that a thatched roof in the distance?

Thinking out loud here on my computer screen has brought me to a realization that should have been obvious before now: as a descendant of John Fleming Walsh, Mary Theresa’s second husband and Helen’s stepfather, I need to remember that in a blended family, those unidentifiables may very well be from the “other” family whose importance cannot be denied.

Quit horsing around and make your way to Sepia Saturday for more photo phun.

Wendy

© 2019, Wendy Mathias. All rights reserved.