A Matter of Interpretation         About This Feature         More Expert Photo Analysis         Preserving Your Family Photographs           .         Ethnic Toolkits Web Exclusive Forms Bookstore Soundex Code Generator Resources Writing Workshops Newsletter		All Dressed Up By Maureen A. Taylor Bill Horten sent me two photographs taken in Baltimore, possibly at the same time. The man in the first photo is his grandfather. What he'd like to find out is when and exactly where the pictures were taken. Reading the Time The first photo shows Horten's grandfather wearing a simple dark three-piece suit, white shirt with a false collar, striped tie, black socks and dress shoes. While all these items of clothing are clearly visible in this picture, his hair gives us a date for the photo—men wore their hair brushed back and up from their foreheads around 1915 to 1920. The little boy's picture bears a caption: "All dressed up and no place to go." He's not wearing his everyday clothing, but a dress outfit with a long-waisted jacket, short knickers, full-collared shirt, black socks and short boots. Except for the shirt, all his clothing also dates to about 1915. Generally boys wore a plain-collared shirt (with or without a tie) with this style suit. This child's shirt is reminiscent of the Little Lord Fauntleroy era of boys clothing. (Learn more about that style in the April 26, 2001 Identifying Family Photographs). A 1912 Sears Roebuck Catalog shows a shirt and shoes similar to his. Finding the Place Identifying exactly where these photographs were taken is difficult because there's nothing distinctive about the background in either one. It look like both people are posing in front of the brick townhouse although the shutters are closed in the man's picture and open in the boy's. Similar townhouses exist in several parts of Baltimore, so the buildins style isn't a great clue. Narrowing the possibilities relies on two steps: finding out where the family lived in Baltimore about 1915, and locating pictures of their neighborhood. The first is easy. Searching city directories for the family will lead to a street address. Few Baltimore directories are online, but they're available at the city's Enoch Pratt Free Library. (Large public libraries across the United States often have directories for other locales.) Horten can request a search of a couple of years using the library's Ask A Librarian service. Once he has an address, Horten might be able to locate pictures of their street or neighborhood using the Maryland State Archives, which has an online finding aid to its photographic collections. Horten also can add his identified image to the growing online library at Baltimore City Nineteenth-Century Photographs. This mystery is one step closer to being solved. Now that Horten knows when the images were taken, he has only to do a little more research, then revisit the visual history of his ancestral neighborhood. Maureen A. Taylor, owner of Taylor & Strong, combines her background in history, genealogy, photography and library science to assist individuals and institutions with research and project management. She is the author of several genealogical books and articles, including Preserving Your Family Photographs, Uncovering Your Ancestry through Family Photographs and Scrapbooking Your Family History. Her current book, Preserving Your Family Photographs, shows you how to organize and store your most cherished images, so future generations can enjoy them. You'll learn how to care for family photos, identify different types of damage, use basic conservation techniques, buy proper storage materials and then organize your family photo archive and safely display it for all to see.
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