Here's a bit of proof that you should not only read the comments for each blog column but add one yourself. Imagine my surprise when Denise Damm commented on the one-glove mystery. (This makes the fourth post on this one photo!) 

Denise wrote "I am quite sure that the two men in the back are Samuel Wingfield (born in 1895) and his brother William Garretsmoke Wingfield (born in 1897)." She's speaking of the two men standing in the back of this photo:

According to Denise, the two men were cousins to the Melson boys Joel and Elmore. The Melsons' grandmother was the sister of Sam and Garret's grandfather. I'm so happy to have a reunion to feature in this spot!

Denise sent pictures of Sam and Garrett for me to share with you. Take a look and see what you think. Here's a picture of William taken in 1921:

And here's a picture of Sam:

There is some confusion in the labeling of the first image. It says "Sam and William." Diane thinks it's William. 

Both men were born in Arkansas and later moved to California. I'm going to facilitate a reunion between the women. Denise really wants to talk with her long lost cousin Sue Stevenson. Wish I could be present when they start exchanging pictures and stories.

Last week I wrote about a photo in which two of the men depicted each wore only one glove. I wondered about the significance of this oddity. A couple of people sent me e-mails about their thoughts.

Let's take a closer look at the gloves:



Candy Rypczyk wrote, "My husband had a relative who lost both hands in a coal mining accident in Pennsylvania, and wore heavy gloves like this to hide the hooks he had in place of hands. The young man looks pretty young to have worked in the coal mines, but could also have been born with a hand deformity. Just a thought. (Perhaps the other young man is wearing a glove 'in sympathy.')"

I agree with you, Candy. There's definitely something different about the hands of the man on right. If you compare the dimensions of his hand, the gloved one is significantly larger. That's not the case with the man on the left—both his hands are the same size. I'll delve deeper into this mystery by contacting the owner of the photo to see if she has an additional family information.

Thank you also to the reader who suggested the man on the right might have an artificial limb, and to the person who observed the way the men in the front posed their legs for the picture. Another reader thought it might be a golfing glove.

I wonder if the type of glove provides any clues. It's a heavy leather glove. It's a little fancy for a work glove and their attire doesn't suggest they've come from their day's labor to pose for this picture.

So the questions remain:

• What type of glove is this?
• Do their gloved hands correspond with their dominant hands?
• Did they have injured/artificial hands? Perhaps they are missing partial fingers on those hands?
• What did these men do for work?

Isn't it fun the way a single photo can generate so many questions!

There was a very interesting story about Pio Pico, California's last governor under Mexico, in the July 19 Los Angeles Times. "What made Pio Pico so, well, ugly?" focuses not on the political happenings of his administration, but on how a daguerreotype of him helped identify a medical condition. It's fascinating!

A neurologist compared a daguerreotype of Pico taken in 1852 with a painting of him from 1847 and another photograph from 1858. This doctor believes Pico had a condition called acromegaly, a pituitary tumor that caused his face to become mishapen. The pictorial evidence showed when he first became afflicted and when the pituitary tumor stopped growing. It's a great family photo tale.

I've received several photographs from readers of individuals with obvious medical conditions or dental problems. I'm busy tracking down the clues in those images—he evidence in those photos may be pertinent to the owners' own health history.

If you have a medically related photograph, e-mail it to me. I'd love to see it. 

The Mütter Museum was founded by the College of Physicans of Philadelphia to help educate physicians. While their digital database currently contains images only of doctors, according to their Web site, the picture collection "contains images from the history of medicine, including portraits, buildings, groups, and historical subjects." A photo book, Mutter Museum Historic Medical Photographs (Blast Books, $50) is available. Be prepared: Some of the images are disturbing.

Justin Piccirilli is an extremely patient genealogist. He first contacted me back in 2005 about these images, which he thinks depict his great uncle Costabile Piccirillo in a military uniform.

This is part one of a two-part photo identification problem that covers both military history and foreign family photos.

As you probably know from reading past columns, deciphering clues in a military image is a challenge. There were no standard uniforms in the 19th and early 20th century.

This gorgeous portrait shows a young man in a dress uniform. I know it’s a dress uniform because of the white gloves and shiny epaulets at the shoulders. Each metal piece of his uniform is freshly polished for this important portrait.

This full-body picture shows this man at attention with some simple props—a vase of flowers and a doily on a table.

 

Here, just the man’s head is visible in a picture postcard, framed with illustrated symbols of his native land. The photographer hand-colored the plume red and blue. The photo format gives a beginning time frame for the postcard—photo postcards first became available in 1900.


It’s an interesting card. Each symbol is there for a reason. Here’s part one of the breakdown:

• Underneath the oval portrait are the letters SPQR, which stand for the Latin motto of Rome, Senātus Populusque Rōmānus ("The Senate and the People of  Rome").

• Beneath the motto, the words Ricordo di Roma translate to  “Souvenir of Rome.” You also can see the sons of Rome, Romulus and Remus, nursing from their wolf mother.

•  At the bottom is the photographer’s name, G. Tibaldi, with the words fotografia artistica. Under his name is V. Fabio Massimo.83. I think the 83 refers to 1883, perhaps the year he opened his studio, but I’m not familiar with this term. Anyone seen this before?
  
  
•  Along the bottom edge are the words fotografo dei RR.CC and Vietata la Riproduzione. The latter is essentially a copyright statement.
  
  
• Four vignettes around the oval depict famous Roman battles and scenes. 
  

This identification is a work in progress. I’ll fill you in on more details next time.

Before diving into this week’s identification, I have a question for you: Have you specified in your will who’ll receive your heritage photos after you’re no longer here? If not, your relatives could find themselves in a battle.

Carolanne, the owner of this week’s photo, has spent 17 years trying to gain ownership of her great-aunt’s pictures and family history materials. When Addie Mattilda Weed died in 1990 at age 106, the tenants in her house gave her manuscripts to a university and kept her photos.

Carolanne, Addie’s closest living relative, finally got the photos, but she’s still battling the university—which currently expects her to pay even to copy the papers. So, make sure you’ve planned for the future of your genealogy collection.

On to Carolanne’s question: Who are these people?
She hopes they’re Addie’s mother, Laura Gilman (1844-1926), and father, James Wyatt Weed (1839-1888). 

    
I think Carolanne’s right. Addie lived her whole life in one house—birth to death. Since these photos were in that house among her belongings, they’re likely her close relatives. Also, this couple is the right age to be her parents.

That’s easy, but as usual, there are other questions: When were these images created, and what format are they?  

Both are photographs enhanced with charcoal. Photographers generally took pictures first, then enlarged and enhanced them—turning an ordinary cabinet-style picture into a piece of art. I happen own a similar-style image in a large gilt frame. The frames for these images are missing, and if there were smaller photos, those are unfortunately lost as well.
    
From about 1869 to 1875 women wore high, ruffled collars, long curls and ties at the neckline just as in this portrait. Notice her neck ribbon. Since Gilman and Weed married in 1873, it’s possible this is an engagement or wedding portrait.  

It’s much more difficult to date the picture of her husband, due to the sparse costume details in his picture. If his picture was done at the same time as Addie’s, he’d be 34 years old. His beard resembles the untrimmed facial hair men wore in the mid-1870s. Unlike his wife’s unwrinkled face, he has lines around his eyes, suggesting hard work that required he squint into the sun. According to the 1880 US census, James Weed worked in a mill, but I imagine he also spent time outdoors in his native Maine.

Caroleann sent a third family photo. I’ll tackle that next week, with a few more things to say about the three images. ‘Til then…

These four are dressed for an evening out. Everyday male attire in this period didn’t include silk top hats and shawl-collared vests, unless you were quite affluent.

Sandra Guynn believes the man in the center of this photo is Charles Anthony Doyle (born 1867), and the women, his daughters (born in 1891 and 1892). She can’t identify the man on the left.



Let’s answer the simple question first—when was it taken?

The women’s hats provide a time frame of 1904 to 1908. Large hats and pouched front bodices gave women a then-fashionable S-shaped figure. (Read more about women’s headgear history in Jonathan Walford’s online article on Vintage Fashion Guild.)

However, this date somewhat disagrees with Guynn’s tentative date. Doyle’s daughters would be young children at the beginning of that time frame and teens by 1908. So let’s look at other evidence:

• Hindering this investigation is the lack of a photographer’s imprint. Guyunn’s photo is a copy and doesn’t know where the original is. Since a house’s clapboards and window sash are visible, likely this is an amateur snapshot rather than a professional studio photo. Guynn could examine her own and relatives' pictures for a house with similar construction. 

• Also in the background are two screens. One is a fabric divider commonly found in houses of the era, while on the right is a large divider with attached photographs. They’re blurry, but Guynn should enlarge this photo and try to see if any of the images match other family pictures.
  
  

• One man stares directly into the camera while the women look to our left (probably at another person), and the other man looks in the opposite direction. The man with the top hat is the significant figure based on how they’re posed.

That man is Charles Anthony Doyle, according to Guynn’s tentative identification. He’d be about 40, the right age for this photo. The pose and attire indicate he’s a man of authority. 

The questions remain about the women. Further research using census records could help sort it out.

I’ll be back soon, hopefully with more information and an ID. 

Attached to the inside velvet of this cased photo is a cryptic note, “may be great-grandfather Swale author of Geometric Amusements.” It’s a mystery to the photo's owner, Susan Wellington, who can’t imagine how Swale might be related to her. Is this a family photo or a 19th-century collectible?



I looked for Swale and his book in all the usual places, such as Google and public library databases (including the Boston Public Library’s), but couldn’t find a trace of either. Since every good genealogist knows not everything is online or online and publicly available, I contacted the BPL’s general reference department. Within a few minutes the librarian obtained Swale’s first name and the correct title.

The caption contained an error: John Henry Swale (1775-1837) wrote Geometrical Amusements in the early 19th century. By searching his name in Google Books, I found his book and several brief biographies, including an introduction to a volume written by T.T. Wilkinson, An Account of the Life and Writing of John Henry Swale (1858).  

Wellington’s photo is a copy of an early 1800s sketch of Swale placed in a daguerreotype case from the 1850s or early 1860s—long after Swale’s death. It’s a curious mystery. Obviously someone in the family thought highly enough of Swale to have the copy made and placed in a case.

The only ways for Wellington to figure out if Swale is related to her is to either trace her own ancestry or look for his descendants. I’d start by trying to find Swale’s family information in Wilkinson’s book and by searching databases such as Ancestry.com and FamilySearch.org.

In the 1825 Directory of Lancaster (available on Ancestry.com), Swale appears as a professor of mathematics living at 12 Epworth St., Liverpool. These details give Wellington a few facts to start her search.