The Irascible Mr. Pip and His Human Family, Cheltenham, England, 1900s?

I don't normally feature unidentified family portraits here on the blog, but I just couldn't resist this one. Even though the nameless humans in the image are pretty much overshadowed in every way by the huge personality of the four-legged character sitting atop the wooden table, I felt there still might be an interesting story to dig up from the clues in this portrait.

He may not really be irascible and "Mr. Pip" is probably not his real name, but I felt "dog" just wasn't a colourful enough moniker, so "Mr. Pip" he will be. I suspect he didn't think too highly of the photographer. The firm hold his owners have on him might indicate that Mr. Pip has already tried to launch off of the table to let the photographer know what he thinks of this posing business and his infernal photographic equipment.

W. C. Fields famously advised, "Never work with animals or children," but it seems J.  Holloway worked with both during his years as a photographer, judging from the advertisement he placed in the Glouchester News on 28 May 1887, where he states that "animals and children [are] a specialty." The website Sussex Photo History has already researched the work of Jesse Holloway quite thoroughly and if you would like to know more about his family and photographic studio, you will benefit from visiting their site by clicking on the link above.

But now we're left with two major mysteries:

1) Who are the individuals in the photograph?
2) Who actually photographed this image?

Even though the photographer's imprint says "J. Holloway, Cheltenham," I don't know for sure that Jesse Holloway was actually the photographer. According to Sussex Photo History, Jesse Holloway died in 1896, and his wife, Caroline Holloway took over the business. Then, in 1902, the Holloways' daughter, Edith, became proprietor of the studio. But, according to the 1901 England Census for Cheltenham, every member of the Holloway household was a worker in the family photography business: Caroline (the mother), Annie, Elizabeth, Kate, Wilfred, and Bertha¹.

I think it's a good possibility that Mrs. Holloway and her family continued to use the J. Holloway imprint after his death. I could not locate a single Holloway Studio photograph that carried any name other than "J. Holloway" after 1896. That doesn't mean they don't exist, just that I haven't found them. I also noticed that Caroline Holloway continued to use Jesse's name in the Gloucester county directories after his death, as she did in the 1902 entry²:

Holloway Jesse (Mrs.), photographer, 32 Cambray

If I were to date the image, based on clothing, hairstyle and photograph format, I would make a liberal guess it was taken around 1900-1912, leaning towards 1904-05, but I'm certainly not committed to that. Dating this one is tricky. Just when I think I have a date narrowed down, I notice some other aspect of dress or fashion that suggests an earlier or later dating. We can't see the women's skirts or the cut of the man's suit and there is very little in the way of jewellery or fashion accessories to consider. The women's hairstyles seem to be in line with the late Victorian "frizzy" period. Another indication of date is the man's high imperial collar, which was popular in the 1890s to about 1905. One of the women is wearing a fob-watch pinned to her blouse, which was popular in the Edwardian period, but fell out of favour by the end of the World War I.

Mystery #1 seems to be unsolvable at the moment, so onto Mystery #2.

How would you date this image and who, exactly, is Mr. Pip staring down?

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1 “1901 England Census,” database, Ancestry.ca (http://www.ancestry.ca : accessed 16 Aug 2018), entry for Caroline Holloway (age 59), citing PRO RG13; Piece: 2464; Folio: 88; Page: 12; Cheltenham registration district, Cheltenham subdistrict, ED 37, schedule line number 38, GSU roll: 1341277.^↩
2 "U.K, City and County Directories, 1766-1946", indexed database and digital images, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 10 Aug 2018), page 93, Jesse Holloway (Mrs.) entry; citing "Kelly’s Directory of the County of Gloucester, 1902 (London, Ill.:n.p., 1902)." ^↩

Revisiting the McCandlish House Postcard, Victoria, BC

Five years ago I wrote a post about a real photo postcard, written and sent by Emma McCandlish, a Victoria boarding house owner, with an image of her home on the front. In the post, I wondered if the buildings behind Emma's house at 63 Superior were BC's Parliament Buildings. Street numbering changed in Victoria in 1907, and I suspect 63 Superior may have become 534 Superior. Recently, I found this obituary in the Vancouver Daily World from the 25th of May 1921, which suggests that McCandlish's former home "at the rear of the Parliament Buildings" had been purchased by the provincial government.

I was in Victoria en route to San Francisco week before last and stopped by Munro's Books. There, I discovered a new-to-me print resource, This Old House: Victoria's Heritage Neighbourhoods by the Victoria Heritage Foundation for the City of Victoria. This four volume set, arranged by Victoria neighbourhoods, is an invaluable and informative resource that details historic homes in BC's capital city. I didn't have much time to browse through all of  the volumes, but I did locate an image and brief history of Emma McCandlish's last home at 422 Menzies, a house which was moved from another location to Menzies Street in July of 1910.

More research will have to be done to confirm that the home at 63/534 Superior was demolished and absorbed by the Parliament grounds. I was also curious about Emma's comment on the postcard that there had been some "severe weather" in Victoria around the time of her correspondence to Mrs. Harlock. I had a cursory look through the Daily Colonist newspaper for a couple days before and after the 20th of January, but didn't find any mention of unusually bad weather.

It's amazing how one postcard can generate so many questions and research possibilities!


Here's the original post from November 16, 2013:

First off, today's a good day to celebrate.  Family Photo Reunion has been in existence for one full year now.  I wasn't sure I could make it to November 16th,  through what has proven to be a very busy year, but here we are!

Our post today revolves around this real postcard from Victoria, BC.  It was written by Emma McCandlish, and addressed to Mrs. W. Harlock at 181 Fort Street, Victoria.  Emma McCandlish ran a boarding house in Victoria in 1892 at 63 Superior.  She was still at this property in 1906.  While I didn't have access to the 1907 BC Directory, I did find Emma in the directory for the following year at 534 Superior.

I had a little cyber-walk down Superior Street, thanks to Google Maps today, and I couldn't find a house similar to this one.  If this is, indeed, a picture of her own home, I have a feeling that house is long gone.  Do you see that stately building off in the distance on the left hand side of the image?  I'm wondering if it might be one of the Parliament buildings.

The BC Archives has a collection of correspondence once belonging to Emma McCandlish.  I think it would be fun to have a look the next time I'm down in Victoria.

If you'd like to get a sense of what Victoria was like in 1907, I found a great little video on Youtube.  Emma McCandlish would have been very familiar with these sights.  Who knows, she might even be in the film somewhere.  Enjoy!

William Loring Clark's Grand House and Grounds in Dorchester, MA, 1867

I was in San Francisco last week, browsing bookstores and visiting the California Historical Society Library and Archives. This photograph was found in a box of ephemera at John Windle's Antiquarian Bookstore located on Geary Street. I was intrigued because I don't often find outdoor images from this time period. If the inscription on the back of the photograph is accurate, the picture dates to 1867, just two years after the end of the American Civil War. The woman standing on the front porch is wearing a dress very much in line with what I would expect from that time period. Rachel, the bookseller at John Windle, kindly gave me this photograph and I took it back home to Vancouver Island to see what I could do with it, in terms of identification.

On the reverse:

"Home of Wm Loring Clark Ashmont & Adams of Dorchester

taken spring of 1867

Mrs. Clark W.T.C. Ruth & Webster in carriage Annie Harmon standing

5 acres of grounds."

Sometimes an inscription such as this can be read a number of ways, especially when punctuation is absent. At first glance it looked as if the homeowner's name might be William Loring Clark Ashmont. But that didn't seem right. I thought a good starting point would be to figure out which Dorchester we were dealing with. I learned that Ashmont & Adams are intersecting streets in Dorchester, Massachusetts, and so that is where I began the search.

In 1865, William L. Clark, a thirty-eight year old auditor with the Rutland Railroad, lived in Boston with his wife, Ann and three children: William T., 14; Ruth M., 4; and one-month-old Webster¹. This seemed like a close match with the individuals mentioned on the back of the photograph, but I was a little concerned that this family resided in Boston's Ward 11 rather than Dorchester, a community  located just outside of Boston. A check of the Dorchester City Directory for 1868 shows that Wm. L. Clark, a merchant, had a house on Adams near Ashmont in Dorchester, in addition to a location in Boston, at 105 Summer Street². 

Information about the family after 1870 was difficult to locate. I was able to trace the children, as grown-ups, living in the San Francisco area, but I was unsuccessful locating them in the 1880 US Federal Census. I learned why after finding two death notices for W. L. Clark, one in the Boston Herald on December 25, 1887, which was published about eight months after his death. News must have travelled slowly from San Francisco to Boston in the 1880s. A more timely notice appeared in the San Diego Union³:

San Diego Union, 20 April 1886

The family appears to have moved from Massachusetts to Japan for a period of twelve years, resettling in the Bay area on their return to the United States around 1883. This explains how the image ended up in San Francisco.

As of yet, I haven't figured out how Annie Harmon connects up with this family. 

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1 "Massachusetts State Census, 1865", database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:MQCP-C94 : 1 June 2018), William L Clark, 1865.^↩
2 "U.S. City Directories, 1822-1995", indexed database and digital images, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 6 Aug 2018), page 46, Wm. L. Clark entry; citing "Dorchester, Massachusetts, City Directory, 1868 (Boston, Ill.:n.p., 1968)." ^↩
3 San Diego Union (San Diego, CA) 20 April 1886, page 3 GenealogyBank https://www.genealogybank.com/doc/newspapers/image/v2%3A136E6A0F0DF56B38%40GB3NEWS-13ECFCA5670509CD%402410017-13ECEEA4B9D4EBC4%402-13ECEEA4B9D4EBC4%40 : accessed 10 August 2018^↩