Category: <span>Genealogy</span>

Coal Miners on the way home

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Written on the back, “Herb & D. Alexander on the way home”

From the handwriting, I can tell that my great grandmother labelled the photo, in part, long after it was taken – the style on the top line is a crisp, clean sort of penmanship, and the, “on the way home,” is written in her rather shaky handwriting from when she was older. The back of the photo is set up like a postcard, and the area where the stamp is supposed to be placed can be used to date the photo. This one has “NOKO” stamped on it, which indicates the date is between 1907 and 1920.  This resource  is REALLY helpful for dating photo postcards.  I’d put the date closer to the 1920 end of the date range since Herb, Alfred Herbert Powis (my great-grand uncle), was born in 1892 and died in 1926.  As for D. Alexander, I’ve got no idea!  Herb lived in Beccaria, Clearfield County, Pennsylvania, but I don’t know which mine this is.  It is pretty neat to see these two, dirty from working in the mine, riding a mine cart on their way out, ready to go home.  This is just one of many, MANY photos from an old trunk, and hopefully I’ll be posting more soon!

Red Velvet Victorian Photo Album

Now there’s a title, right?  I couldn’t believe that in 30 years, no one had seen or heard about this album that contains images of family members dating from the 1890s.  My grandfather passed away this summer, and we went out earlier this Fall to help grandma do some cleaning and to spend time chatting and whatnot.  Grandma brought out the album that she had found while organizing grandpa’s computer room.  It’s covered in worn red velvet with a mirror sewn into the cover, and is closed with a metal latch.  For being over 100 years old, it’s in pretty good condition.

I’m willing to bet it hasn’t been opened much, and it’s a real shame that so few of the photos are dated or labelled. Great Grandma had passed the album along to grandpa and now it’s come home with me. I decided to scan in all the photos in hopes that maybe someone, somewhere might recognize a few and help me solve some of the mysteries inside the album – we were able to identify a few photos from the other trunk (not joking, great-great grandma’s old steamer trunk that came with her from England was home to ALL THE PHOTOS) full of photos. Great grandma had gone through and put names on the back of some which was really pretty helpful. I’ve included the backs to the photos when there was something on the back, and some of the designs are really gorgeous.  The photos are all arranged on the page in the order they appear in the album and I’m sure there’s something to the order of the photos.  If you can help identify or date any of the photos, please leave a comment. Click on through for the photos! (Warning, VERY graphics heavy below the cut)

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