View allAll Photos Tagged postmortem
Morgue at Queen Elizabeth II Hospital, Welwyn Garden City.
More here - www.bcd-urbex.com/queen-elizabeth-ii-hospital-welwyn-gard...
COLUMBA: Ongoing photographic project started 16.8.2011
Part of the set "postmortem"
DMC-G2 - P1250872 19.1.2012
"F. Heimbach's, Photographers, Cor. Eighth & Hamilton Sts., Allentown, PA."
This CDV is almost certainly of a mother holding her dead son. As is sometimes seen in postmortem images, the mother is not embracing her child; he rest upon her with minimum support, his hands slack and eyelids flat. Her cheeks are tinted with the pink representation of life, whilst his remain bone white and unadorned.
Hemoglobin is a strong pigment. Blood from slaughtered pilot whales, diluted in sea water.
Unedited JPEG straight from the FinePix A330.
Used wth permission at societe.fluctuat.net/diaporamas/iles-feroe-le-mercure-sau...
Ongoing photographic project started 16.8.2011
Part of the set "postmortem".
DMC-G2 - P1070736 16.8.2011
(No animals were harmed for the picture)
This is an puzzling image—and one for which I am interested in reader input. The inscription on the image, printed in pencil with no punctuation, reads: “Mother, Me, Duncan (died 10-19), and Nanny McFalls.”
When I purchased the cabinet card, I presumed that it was a postmortem image showing a deceased child guarded by his or her Nanny, who wore a black bow on her white cap as well as a black dress with a white pin-front apron. The child’s well-heeled mother, in a proper dark dress, raised her eyes to heaven as if for angelic support, clutching her remaining offspring, who held a large china doll and looked warily at the camera.
Read more about this image at my history site, "Your Dying Charlotte." dyingcharlotte.com/2016/11/26/nanny-mcfalls-cabinet-card/
We are back from our visit to the Daguerreian Society Symposium in Baltimore. As always we enjoyed the lectures, seeing our far flung Daguerreian friends, and the (to me) best sales show of vintage photographs. As a bonus we saw a number of our Baltimore friends and got to meet a flickr friend in person.
We bought only two images rather that the large number we usually buy but we decided to concentrate on one of our areas of interest, post mortem.
One of the images was left with our wonderful conservator for new glass but the other is shown here. The beautiful baby girl, pictured in her coffin, is Helen Maria Spalding who was born on March 8th, 1848 and died at 10 months old on January 10, 1849. I have posted a photograph of the velvet pad with a little knot of white ribbon, likely from her white gown and an obituary clipped from a newspaper.
There are those who question our interest in this genre. Yes, they make us sad but they are an important window on life in the 19th century and reflect the impact of the invention of photography on society.
One of the artifacts created for the photography is dead! Long live photography! Show. Dragging a glowing corpse through the streets of Queanbeyan and into some of its darker corners produced very little alarm for my home town. At one point I had to turn everything off to wait for some late night revellers to move along. Sitting in the dark wondering whether the fear of scorn or my want to avoid social interaction whilst trying to capture an image of something I’ve poured many hours into was drive me to cowering in the bushes. Standing in the dark with the scurrying possums, I knew running and keeping the work intact was never an option!
HAPPY 235TH BIRTHDAY, LUDWIG!
My favorite portrait of Beethoven, at age 48 (1818). The glazed look in his eyes was from the strong coffee he was drinking, using 60 beans to make one cup! Painted by Ferdinand Schimon, it's in the Beethovenhaus, in Bonn. Full ferame view here.
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Beethoven in the news:
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Beethoven's bones -
SAN JOSE STATE SCHOLAR UNRAVELS THE STORY OF A FASCINATING
DISCOVERY IN THE EAST BAY
By Richard Scheinin, Mercury News
www.centredaily.com/mld/centredaily/news/nation/13374005.htm
Dec. 11, 2005
Joan Kaufmann is thumbing through neatly cataloged volumes of family letters and documents in her Danville home when she comes across a page of scribblings of particular interest. Casually jotted on a piece of paper are the contents of an aluminum lunchbox that once belonged to a relative named Tom Desmines in the south of France: ``11 silver spoons... 1 gold chain, 36 grams... Chinese lock and key... box Beethoven skullbones.''
Kaufmann, who is 70, chuckles: ``I never assumed that I married into a family like this.''
She did, 47 years ago. But it's only recently that the family history has come sailing out of the mists. In 1990, she and her husband Paul, a business executive, visited Desmines, an old bohemian who was badly ailing, and brought home the bones that Paul had been hearing about since he was a boy and which his Uncle Tom had stashed in the lunch box.
In Danville, they locked them in their bank's safety deposit box and figured they would look into their authenticity -- Beethoven's bones? -- once Paul, whose career was going great guns, retired.
Paul Kaufmann, now 69 and not yet close to being retired, couldn't quite wrap his head around just what might be lying there in the bank vault until a Beethoven scholar named William Meredith entered the picture six years ago.
It took Meredith, director of San Jose State University's Center for Beethoven Studies, to uncover and explain the complicated chain of family history that he is convinced brought the bones to Danville. And to overcome Kaufmann's skepticism: ``The whole thing seemed so fantastic to him,'' Meredith says. ``How could part of Beethoven's body wind up in Danville?''
The journey of the bones is a real who-done-it, a grand 19th century tale, much of it set in Vienna amid what turns out to be one of the most fascinating families in that city's fabled cultural history.
Perhaps its most compelling character is Kaufmann's great-great uncle Romeo Seligmann -- known as ``The Wonderful'' in Vienna -- who was a collector of skulls, an eminent physician, scholar and friend of Franz Schubert. His best friend was Ottilie von Goethe, the daughter-in-law of the poet Goethe, the other titan of 19th century German culture. Some of Ottilie's many gifts to Romeo -- including the poet's own silver pencil -- now are owned by the Kaufmanns.
But for headline purposes, the bones are unbeatable.
Last month, Meredith and Kaufmann announced that the skull fragments had surfaced: ``The first time the world has ever known where they are,'' Meredith said at a press conference. Already, the Kaufmanns had loaned the fragments -- two slightly less than palm-sized pieces and 10 pebble-sized flakes -- in perpetuity to the Beethoven Center where they will remain under lock and key for future study.
Eventually, with as much sensitivity as possible, they are likely to be displayed in an exhibit explaining their history and the scientific testing to which they've been subjected.
Last week, it was announced that chemical testing of the fragments at a U.S. Energy Department lab supports the theory that Beethoven died of lead poisoning at age 56 in 1827. Excessively high lead levels were found in the bones.
This was an important announcement: In his famous Heiligenstadt Testimony, written in 1802, poor Beethoven, who suffered from terrible fevers, debilitating stomach ailments and famously erratic behavior, had confessed thoughts of suicide and prayed that, after his death, his doctor would be able to ``explain the causes of my malady so that the world may be reconciled to me.''
The source of the lead poisoning remains a mystery, yet all of Beethoven's ailments conceivably were attributable to it -- maybe even his deafness, though Meredith suspects the composer's slow-growing hearing loss had other causes, possibly genetic.
That's one reason he and the Kaufmanns took the bones last June to the University of Munster in Germany. There, researchers carefully drilled a half moon-shaped crater the size of a pea in the underside of one of the fragments, captured the drilled-out bone dust, and -- first things first -- attempted to match DNA extracted from the dust to that of a famous lock of Beethoven's hair that has been part of the Beethoven Center's collection since 1994. (The idea being to put to rest any fears that the bones might not
belong to the composer.)
Thus far, only a partial match has been made. Future tests and advancing technology may or may not change that fact; given the age of the bones, Meredith cautions, a complete match may never happen, in which case the source of the deafness also might remain a mystery.
Yet the provenance of the bones -- its chain-like history of ownership, laid out by Meredith in detail in the latest issue of The Beethoven Journal, published by the American Beethoven Society -- appears so rock-solid that he and other scholars are convinced they are the real thing.
``I have every confidence that these bone fragments are genuine,'' says Barry Cooper, a British expert on Beethoven. University of California-Berkeley musicologist Richard Taruskin didn't even raise the possibility of misidentification in an e-mail to Meredith. He simply urged against exhibition of the bones: ``Oh, please, don't display them. Displays of saints' relics have nothing to do with scholarship.''
The story of the saint's bones begins, of course, in Vienna. The day after Beethoven died in 1827, his body was subjected to a brutal autopsy; the ears were cut out and the skullcap was roughly removed, a primary reason that Beethoven's skull fell into nine large fragments.
In 1863, the body was exhumed for study and reburial by the Society of Friends of Music in Vienna. That, Meredith is certain, is when Romeo Seligmann, Kaufmann's great-great uncle, secretly was given the bones, one from the back of the head, one from the left side.
In the course of what was deemed a scientific inquiry into the composer's genius, he had been measuring and analyzing some of the bones at the apartment of a man named Gerhard von Breuning. As a teenager, Breuning had visited Beethoven on his deathbed and now believed the bones to be of such scientific importance that they shouldn't be reburied. Meredith posits a "gentleman's agreement'' between Breuning, Seligmann and possibly the Society itself, allowing Romeo to keep certain of the skull bones.
Romeo ``The Wonderful'' was an anthropologist, author, translator of Persian texts and doctor, the first professor of the history of medicine at the University of Vienna. Of special interest, considering the recent DNA testing of the bones, is the fact that his mother was a cousin of Gregor Mendel, the father of genetics. ``Romeo is just one of the most interesting guys of the 19th century,'' says Meredith. ``Nobody beats him.''
He also is just one of the characters in the saga. Romeo left the bones to his son Albert, a distinguished painter and art critic in Vienna and a friend of Johannes Brahms. Albert seems to have hidden the fragments during World War II (the only gap in the provenance), fearful that the Nazis, who turned Beethoven's music into an advertisement for the Third Reich, would have had a field day with the relics.
Though his family had converted to Catholicism, Albert also may have feared that his own Jewish blood would be discovered and the bones seized as a result.
Then there is Albert's cousin, Ada Rosenthal Kaufmann, a botanist, who fled the Nazis and, along with her son Tom Desmines, inherited the bones from Albert when he died in 1945. Desmines, a Nazi prisoner of war who survived to become a Nuremberg Trials translator, lived out his life in Vence, France, taking baths in the Roman cistern in his garden and drinking wine with his friend Marc Chagall.
Before Meredith began his research, reading, translating and ordering the Kaufmanns' voluminous collection of letters and
documents, Paul Kaufmann had known only the bare-bones outline of the succession of ownership of the skull fragments, from Romeo to Albert to Ada and Tom.
``Can you imagine how I felt when I suddenly learned all of this?,'' he asks. ``I was in awe. I'm still in awe.''
Kaufmann grew up in Honolulu, where his parents immigrated in the 1920s. His father, George Otto Kaufmann, born in Germany, trained thousands of residents and GIs in refrigeration, radio and other trades. His mother, Alma -- sister of Tom, daughter of Ada -- worked at her husband's trade school and, when Paul was a boy, would call for him by opening the back door and whistling the first notes of Beethoven's Fifth.
``My parents were very much aficionados of classical music and the arts,'' says Kaufmann, who after graduating high school in 1953 attended the U.S. Coast Guard Academy in Connecticut, married Joan, and received his MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
The couple began raising their two children and set off into what Joan calls ``the corporate life.'' Paul Kaufmann's most recent venture is as president and CEO of Wellness Express Healthcare, which is establishing walk-in medical clinics in Longs Drugs stores in California and Hawaii.
For years, the couple only occasionally mentioned the bones to friends. Joan Kaufmann imitates the typical reaction, a mixture of surprise and skepticism: ```Oh, really?,''' she says, raising her eyebrows.
Touring the house with the Kaufmanns, one gets the feeling that the Old World has at last become part of their New World. The most valuable treasures have been stored elsewhere, but the corridors are lined with paintings, lithographs and a number of engravings of European ruins, gifts from Ottilie to Romeo.
There is a portrait of Louis Pasteur -- Meredith figures he was yet another family friend -- and one by Albert of an Aunt Therese, noble and a little mysterious in profile.
A small table, around which Romeo, Schubert and their friends once sat smoking pipes, is in the vestibule. The Biedermeier desk at which Romeo and Albert worked in Vienna is in the bedroom and one of Albert's engravings is in the living room.
It is a colorful ballroom scene, two men in tails, looking a bit anxious as they prepare to ask a pair of beautiful women to dance.
Another window into a rediscovered world.
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Lead Did in Beethoven?
By Steven Milloy
www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,178884,00.html
December 15, 2005
This weekend marks the
235th anniversary of the
birth of composer Ludwig van Beethoven. But it’s his death over 178
years ago that made headlines last week when researchers
supposedly “confirmed” that Beethoven died from lead poisoning.
As you may imagine, such sensational way-after-the-fact “news” begs
further inquiry.
“Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National
Laboratory have found massive amounts of lead in bone fragments belonging
to 19th Century composer Ludwig von Beethoven, confirming the cause of
his years of chronic debilitating illness,” touted the researchers’ media
release.
And a high-tech angle adds apparent credibility to their claim: “The bone
fragments, confirmed by DNA testing to have come from Beethoven's body,
were scanned by X-rays from the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne,
which provides the most brilliant X-rays in the Western Hemisphere,” the
media release stated.
Now, I don’t doubt that the researchers found “elevated” levels of lead in
Beethoven’s skull, but that’s a long way from concluding that lead caused or
even contributed to his death.
First, the researchers don’t seem to know how much lead was actually
measured in the bone fragments. As the Washington Post’s Rick Weiss
reported, “technical problems kept the team from getting a precise number
from [the bone] samples.”
The researchers stated that their new findings “confirm the earlier work done
on [Beethoven’s] hair samples” – which reportedly had lead concentrations
on the order of 60 parts per million (ppm).
But there are several significant problems with the researchers’ reliance on
the hair lead measurements.
First, hair lead measurements are not reliable indicators of exposure to lead,
according to a 1991 report by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention entitled, “Preventing Lead Poisoning in Young Children.” And
German researchers have pointed out that, “trace element content of hair
does not correlate with the trace element concentrations in metabolically
important tissues.”
So the measurement of “elevated” lead levels in Beethoven’s hair doesn’t
necessarily indicate that he had toxic lead levels in his vital organs.
Next, it’s not exactly clear that Beethoven’s hair lead level was dangerously
“elevated.”
Hair lead levels in the U.S. have been measured at 100 ppm in children and
155 in adults with no reported clinical health effects, according to JE
Fergusson’s 1990 book entitled, “The Heavy Elements: Environmental
Impact and Health Effects.”
Beethoven’s hair lead measurements, in fact, have little meaning and
certainly can’t be used to bolster any alleged import of the bone fragment “measurements” – which are of dubious significance in their own right.
A researcher reported in the British Journal of Industrial Medicine (May
1975) that, in his postmortem study of 129 individuals, “Bone lead
concentrations increased with age in both sexes, more especially in male subjects and in dense bone, varying between mean values of 2-16 ppm in the ribs of children to over 50 ppm in the dense [skull] bones of elderly male adults… Present levels of lead in the environment are not considered to be a
hazard to the health of the population in general.”
Since the 50 ppm skull bone measurements in elderly males seems to be of
little concern and that lead level may very well be consistent with the
“elevated” lead concentrations reportedly observed in Beethoven’s skull
fragments – based on the researchers own comparison of the hair and bone
fragment results – it’s quite likely that lead had nothing to do with
Beethoven’s death.
So what was the cause of Beethoven’s death? No one really knows. But
based on records of an autopsy performed the day after Beethoven died, it
seems that he experienced kidney failure that may have been caused by his overuse of analgesic powdered willow bark and alcohol.
Even lead alarmist Herb Needleman doubts that lead poisoning was
Beethoven’s downfall, observing that composing near the end of his life
argues against the lead hypothesis. “Lead makes you stupid and he wasn't
stupid,” Needleman told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in April 2002.
The Washington Post report of the Argonne study quoted William Meredith,
a Beethoven scholar from San Jose State University as stating, “There have
been many doctors who have theorized about what ailed Beethoven. But [the Argonne test result] is actual science versus someone else’s description of symptoms.”
But Meredith has it all wrong. A closer look indicates that the Argonne
researchers’ conclusion seems to be just another overzealous interpretation of dubious measurements in hopes of sensational headlines. Scholars ought to be wary of such junk science-fueled myth-making.
She may be English, as the white crape caps were favored by widows there, but she may also be American--stylistically the image points to that. She also appears to wearing a brooch incorporating woven hair surrounded by pearls, which symbolized tears.
Creepiest post-mortem shot I've ever seen, and you're talking about someone who goes to a lot of cemeteries. Scary, man.
Mount Carmel Cemetery
Hillside, IL
Frühlingliches Entropie-Stillleben.
Part of the set "postmortem" COLUMBA: Ongoing photographic project started 16.8.2011
DMC-G2 - P1320323 27.3.2012
The second daguerreotype we bought at the Daguerreian Society Symposium came back from the conservator today. When I opened the package it again brought tears to my eyes. All of our postmortems of babies and children are heartbreaking but the figure of the hidden father in the background makes this one seem especially poignant. The little face on the white pillow seems to glow and the looming figure of a man says to me that the father did not want to be in the picture but could not leave the baby alone.
"J.M. Keniston, Danville IL."
I believe this woman is wearing mourning, although I am not completely sure. The white flowers in her coif may indicate widowhood; she may be wearing a hair mourning brooch. This American CDV can't really date any earlier than 1859, but her gown appears fashion-retro. The bodice shape is completely wrong for the era, unless she either wore this cut of gown when younger and refused to change style, or it is an old mourning dress being re-worn for a new loss. The other option is that this is a copy of an earlier daguerreotype, although I am not seeing any real signs that it is. Your thoughts?
© Ann Longmore-Etheridge Collection.
Here is yet another image of a woman wearing a mourning brooch in a sloppy way--in this case, cocked nearly vertical. I wouldn't have expected this from a Victorian, as it has the air of disregard for the deceased. That said, I now have multiple images of such in my collection--enough, perhaps, that this no longer an exception, but indeed part of a rule. And *that* said--I completely love this image. She has totally won my heart. What a dear she must have been!
The card is stamped with the name of a Russian photographer and there is faded Cyrillic writing on the reverse.
It's very possible the child is just asleep, but I can't say for sure. The difficulty in getting a child this age to hold still during the long exposure might have made it easier to take a picture while it was asleep.
Written on the reverse are the first names of those in the picture. Sitting: Mary, grandmother, Robert, and Jennie. Standing: Belle, Howard, John, Ida Blanche, George. The black-draped, empty seat presumably belonged to the deceased grandfather, although it might also be a reference to Mary's husband. Sadly, the omission of a last name prevents me from discovering more about them.
© Ann Longmore-Etheridge Collection
Plate is Hallmarked "WHH 40". The sitter is probably in mourning and may be wearing a hair memorial brooch, although the gold paint has made it impossible to tell.
Tintype of a deceased baby, this one very young. Probably another child of Charles & Julia (Young) Shontell. 1870's I believe.
"Vaughan, Photographer, 223 Bowery, New York."
This hand-tinted image is a home run of 1860s mourning photos. Because it is tinted we can be absolutely sure that a black dress was indeed a black dress, that her collar and her belt both were also black, and--as the coup de grace to any possibility that this is not a mourning ensemble--she is wearing a large gold photo brooch that probably contained a lock of hair in a reverse compartment. This is the fashion plate for what an 1860s, Civil War-era woman in mourning looked like, minus a black veiled bonnet, which would not have been normally worn inside. When one sees non-colored CDVs of women wearing similar outfits, you can be sure that in reality those outfits were black and that those women were in mourning.
I am not sure what the gold object tucked beneath her belt is. My first thought is a gold pocket watch, but I see no chain. It may also be a small mirror.
Red velvet inner cushion marked: "C. C. Scoonmaker, Market Bank Building, 282 River St., Troy, N.Y."
A long inscription is penciled inside the case of this daguerreotype: “The picture of Flora and her mother, taken when she was three years old at McGrawville, Cortland Co., NY.
The penciled inscription inside the daguerreotype case.
“I’ll think of thee at eventide/ When shines the star of love/ When Earth is garnished like a bride/ and all is joy a-bove/ and when the moon’s pale genial face/ is shed or [sic] land & sea/ and throughs [sic] around her soft light/ t’is then I think of thee. EM
“Flora & I are in the parlor as I write this, talking of the war, etc. etc. Henry …?… is buried Thursday Oct. 30th, ’62.”
Continue reading this article at my history site, Your Dying Charlotte,
This woman in full mourning wears a good chain and pencil case and may have a gold brooch at her throat, as well as a black bracelet. This once again shows that gold jewelry was worn by some women in first-stage mourning.
© Ann Longmore-Etheridge Collection. A mother in an old-fashioned widow's bonnet poses with her daughters. Her white frill, while they wear solid black, implies that the loss is of her husband and the daughters' father.
(I should also note that another possible relationship between these ladies is mother, daughter, granddaughter.)
This is a recent addition to our post mortem collection. There is no doubt that this cild is deceased. Her eyes have been painted just slightly open so that they can appear both open and closed depending on the angle you view her.
Title: Post-mortem Portrait of Infant Girl
Artist: Unknown artist
Creation Date: 1852
Print Date: ca. 1852
Process: daguerreotype
Credit Line: Gift of Stanley B. Burns
Accession Number: 1984.019.064
there was really no need for such a scene to be pushed under the viewer's eye again and again, yet it was all that there was to see at the moment.
over the next assignment we will be talking about the faculty of letting the enemy define your edges, a tactic called psychotic mimicry or your mileage of getting old. but it's still too early for that assignment, so here's the view from the window with all its shrieking implications, a yet to be sung tune being completely out of tune.
ultimately, choices are for wimps. the rest of us is just holding still through sandstorms and meteorite deluges, whistling the looney tunes theme.
It's interesting that the magnificently colored red drape is barely seen in the final matted format.
Carlos Baker was born in Ohio, 1 October, 1827. He was the son of Ebenezer Baker, a veteran of the War of 1812 (13 Sept., 1787, Vermont – 21 Nov., 1859, Allegan, MI), and Mary Chase Spalding (23 May, 1795, Waitsfield, VT – 16 April, 1873, Beatrice, Nebraska). The couple wed on 1 February, 1815, in Waitsfield, Vermont. Carlos was the fifth of their ten children born during the course of four decades. The others were: Sarah M. (29 May, 1816 – 1895); Horace W. (17 Feb., 1818-1850); Artimas N. (b. 1821); Cordelia (4 June, 1824 – 1900); Julia C. (b. 12 May, 1826); Rodney Spalding (6 June, 1830 – 1905); Norman (8 Feb., 1832 – 1850); William H. (2 June, 1835 – 1870); Philmer (b. 22 July, 1838); and Littlejohn (8 Feb.,1840 – 1904).
Carlos’s paternal grandparents were Johnathan Baker (d. 4 Feb., 1850, Marcellus, NY) and Sarah, last name unknown (d. 30 April, 1833). Carlos’s maternal grandparents were Abel Spalding (28 December, 1764, New Ipswich, NH – 16 June, 1844, Norton, OH) and Hannah Chase (24 Dec., 1769, Cornish, NH – 2 March, 1832, Delaware Co., OH). Abel and Hannah were married in 1790. Before becoming husband and wife, Spalding had been a private in the company commanded by Captain Charles Nelson of Delaware County in Col. Benjamin Wait's Vermont Regiment for seven months in 1781. Spalding appeared before an Ohio court to battle for his pension payments, and he gave evidence that was recorded verbatim. This included that he was one of the troops raised to defend against attacks by “the invading Tories from Canada…. The Indians and Tories were continuously hovering around us, keeping us in a state of alarm, and occasionally either killing or carrying off our scouts.” He continued that, after being mustered out, “I was paid for my services in Vermont bank paper money, which was then worth almost nothing.”
In 1850, the census places Carlos Baker in the township of Lyme, Huron County, Ohio, as a 24-year-old cabinetmaker with personal goods valued at $700. He appears to be living as a lodger. He arrived in Allegan, Michigan, sometime in the next few years—perhaps he came to join his father, Ebenezer, who was in Allegan County by 1850, as was Carlos’s brother Littlejohn. Wikipedia says that the town had its roots planted several decades earlier, when “The men after whom Allegan's downtown streets were named—Elisha Ely, Samuel Hubbard, Charles Christopher Trowbridge, Pliny Cutler, and Edmund Monroe—patented land in the area in 1833. They considered the site a prime location for industry, due to its potential for waterpower (since it straddled the Kalamazoo River) and water-bound transportation. By 1835, a dam and sawmill had been established.”
Carlos soon met the woman who would become his wife, Eliza Higgins (15 April, 1829, NY – 3 April, 1903, Allegan, MI). She was the daughter of Jabin Strong Higgins (b. 9 March, 1799, Windham, New York) and Betsey Aldrich (b. 10 November, 1802, Poultney, Vermont). The pair wed 8 April, 1854. In short order they had three children: Willis J. (b. 1854 or 1855); Albertis Otis (b. 2 June 1857); and Ernestine (b. 18 August, 1859).
Carlos’s father, Ebenezer Baker, died 21 November, 1859, of consumption in Gunplain, Allegan County. He was buried in Oakwood Cemetery—the first to be laid to rest in the family plot.
On 17 November, 1860, we can read Carlos Baker’s own words in a letter to the editors he wrote to the publication The Scientific American. The subject was most delightful: pans for boiling maple sap. “We use sheet iron pans almost entirely, for the purpose of making maple sugar, and I suppose no other population in this nation, of equal numbers, makes as much and as good maple sugar as we do.” One can almost hear the Ken Burns-style voiceover. After describing the pans’ construction, Carlos concludes, “Pans made in that fashion, of common stove pipe iron, have been in use in our ‘bush’ fifteen years, and are good pans yet, not being half worn or rusted out.”
On the 1860 census of Allegan, Carlos is enumerated as a cabinetmaker with real estate worth $1,000 and personal goods worth $800. His wife, Eliza, had real estate worth $4,000. That same year, an agricultural census was taken in June. Carlos is recorded to have had 8 improved acres, 22 unimproved; the cash value of the land was $1,000; he had 1 cow and 4 swine valued at $50; and 200 bushels of Indian corn. It sounds peaceful and bucolic—no doubt it was, but the darkness of war was coming, even to rural Michigan.
In July 1862, 34-year-old Carlos Baker was one of the men who signed the articles of association of the First Congregational Church of Allegan, the house of worship that he and his family may have been attending since its nascence in 1857; they had been officially received into the congregation on 31 December, 1858. Then, on 5 September, 1862, Carlos enlisted as a private in Company B, 19th Michigan Infantry Volunteers. It was organized at Dowagiac, Michigan, on that day, and would not muster out until 10 June, 1865. (Carlos’s brother, Littlejohn, enlisted 13 Feb. 13, 1864, in Company B of the 13th Michigan Infantry as a corporal, and mustered out 25 July, 1865.)
The 19th Regiment has a rather concise regimental history—albeit not because they saw no action:
“Left State for Cincinnati, Ohio, September 14, and duty at Covington, Ky., until October 7. Moved to Georgetown, Lexington, Sandersville and to Nicholasville, Ky., October 7-November 13. Attached to 1st Brigade, 3rd Division, Army of Kentucky, Dept. of Ohio, October 1862, to February 1863. Coburn's Brigade, Baird's Division, Army of Kentucky, Dept. of the Cumberland, to June 1863. 3rd Brigade, 1st Division, Reserve Corps, Dept. of the Cumberland, to October 1863. Coburn's unattached Brigade, Dept. of the Cumberland, to December 1863. Post of Murfreesboro, Tenn., Dept. of the Cumberland, to January 1864. 2nd Brigade, 1st Division, 11th Army Corps, Army of the Cumberland, to April 1864. 2nd Brigade, 3rd Division, 20th Army Corps, Army of the Cumberland, to June 1865.
“SERVICE: Moved to Danville, Ky., December 12, 1862, and duty there until January 26, 1863. Moved to Louisville, Ky., thence to Nashville, Tenn., January 26-February 7, and to Brentwood Station February 21. To Franklin, February 23. Reconnaissance toward Spring Hill March 3-5. Action at Spring Hill, Thompson's Station, March 4-5. Regiment mostly captured by Bragg's Cavalry forces, nearly 18,000 strong, under Van Dorn. Little Harpeth and Brentwood March 25 (Detachment). Exchanged May 25, 1863. Regiment reorganized at Camp Chase, Ohio, during June. Moved to Nashville, Tenn., June 8-11. Middle Tennessee or Tullahoma Campaign June 23-July 7. Moved to Murfreesboro, Tenn., July 23, and garrison duty there until October 25. Stockade near Murfreesboro Bridge, Stone's River, October 4 (Co. "D"). Moved to McMinnville October 25, and duty there until April 21, 1864. Ordered to Join Corps in Lookout Valley. Atlanta (Ga.) Campaign May 1-September 8. Demonstrations on Rocky Faced Ridge May 8-11. Boyd's Trail May 9. Battle of Resaca May 14-15. Cassville, May 19. New Hope Church, May 25. Operations on line of Pumpkin Vine Creek and battles about Dallas, New Hope Church and Allatoona Hills, May 25-June 5. Operations about Marietta and against Kennesaw Mountain, June 10-July 2. Pine Hill June 11-14. Lost Mountain, June 15-17. Gilgal or Golgotha Church, June 15. Muddy Creek, June 17. Noyes Creek, June 19. Kolb's Farm, June 22. Assault on Kennesaw, June 27. Ruff's Station, July 4. Chattahoochee River, July 5-17. Peach Tree Creek, July 19-20. Siege of Atlanta, July 22-August 25. Operations at Chattahoochee River Bridge, August 26-September 2. Occupation of Atlanta, September 2-November 15. March to the sea, November 15-December 10. Campaign of the Carolinas, January to April, 1865. Lawtonville, S.C., February 2. Averysboro, N. C., March 16. Battle of Bentonville March 19-21. Occupation of Goldsbore March 24. Advance on Raleigh April 10-14. Occupation of Raleigh April 14. Bennett’s House April 26. Surrender of Johnston and his army. March to Washington, D.C., via Richmond, Va., April 29-May 19. Grand Review May 24. Mustered out June 10, 1865.
“Regiment lost during service 7 Officers and 88 Enlisted men killed and mortally wounded and 160 Enlisted men by disease. Total 255.”
Carlos kept a diary during his war years and Eliza kept a daybook. Both of these are now in Duke University’s rare book and manuscript library. I have not yet been able to access the documents, but the university describes them as follows: “The collection comprises two volumes. One is a 127-page diary maintained by Carlos Baker at the end of the Civil War, dated 15 November, 1864, to 10 July, 1865. Baker provides very detailed descriptions of the final days of the conflict, even naming the farms where his company camps or fights. Of particular interest are the descriptions of his company's participation in General Sherman's March to the Sea, their marches through the Carolinas, and their fighting at Savannah, Ga., Averysboro, NC, and Bentonville, NC. The other volume in the collection is a 60-page commonplace book (1863 - 1871) maintained by Carlos Baker’s wife, Eliza. In it are diary entries containing poignant descriptions of her anxiety about her husband's safety and many moving descriptions of her uncertainty about the future; poems and letters she composed; and notes about items she purchased, bartered with, or sold over the period.”
After the war had finished, Carlos returned to Allegan and took up his life where it had left off. On the 1870 census, captured on the date of 14 June, Carlos was enumerated as a cabinetmaker with real estate valued at $3,000 and a personal estate of $1,500. His wife, Eliza, had personal real estate valued at $4,000. The children—Willis, 15; Albertis (who seems to have preferred to be called Otis), 13; and Ernestine, 10, were at home. It was a mere six years later, on 1 May, 1876, that Carlos Baker died at the age of 48 of a yet undiscovered cause.
The cabinet card in my collection shows an unknown man in a four-wheel trap parked beside Carlos’s elaborate “white bronze” (zinc) grave marker in Oakwood Cemetery, Allegan. The trap has a business name painted on the side that seems to read: “White Brothers Monuments”—presumably the makers of the memorial. On the reverse of the card is several layers of information, scribbled in pencil. Among what can be deciphered is “Allegan,” “T. S. [unknown word]” “Hight [sic] 13 ft. 6 in., Base 4 ft 6 in. and square,” as well as two columns of numbers. Taken as a whole, it seems to refer to the monument’s dimensions and cost. (Reverse: www.flickr.com/photos/60861613@N00/12837105703/in/photost...)
The year that the monument was installed is not known, but the cabinet card dates to perhaps the late 1880s. Records indicate that the government placed a Civil War veteran’s headstone on Carlos’s grave. Presumably, there was a similar stone on the grave of Ebenezer. Both of these were removed when the imposing monument was put in place. It cannot have been inexpensive, even though it was cast zinc and not marble. No matter the cost, it is a testament to the respect that Carlos had within his family and community.
Eliza Higgins Baker and her three adult children are enumerated on the 1880 Census for Allegan. Willis, then 25, was a cabinetmaker like his father; Albertis was a 23-year-old laborer.
Ernestine died at the age of 21 on 6 April, 1881, in Allegan, and was buried with Carlos and Ebenezer. Her cause of death is not known, but the most likely reason is disease. In December, 1881, Eliza filed for and was granted a veteran’s widow’s pension.
We cannot glimpse the Baker family in 1890 because of the destruction of those census records, but in 1900, 71-year-old Eliza was living in Allegan with Willis, still a cabinet maker, who had married Lillie E. Fowler (b.1861). The couple had a daughter, Inez Emily, born 12 January, 1882, who was then 18.
On the day of the 1900 census, Otis was living two houses down the road from Willis and his mother. Otis had married Mary J. (last name unknown) (b. Aug. 12, 1867, MI) in 1888. The census notes that he was a day laborer. The couple had one son, Otis Marion Baker, born 8 May, 1901, and two daughters: Ruth L. (b. 11 October, 1905) and Ruby I. (b. 1908).
Sometime after Eliza’s death in April 1903—perhaps after the memorial plaque with her name and dates was affixed to the tall, white monument in Oakwood Cemetery—Willis and his family went west to California. The 1910 census places them in Riverside, Temescal County. Willis was retired and daughter Inez was a stenographer in a law office; they had two lodgers. Willis died in California in 1913 and is buried at Corona Sunnyslope Cemetery, Corona, Riverside County. Lillie and Inez appear to have experienced financial difficulties after his passing. On the 1920 census of Corona, 58-year-old Lillie is enumerated was a citrus fruit packer, Inez was still working as a stenographer, and they had three lodgers. Things may have improved by 1930, when the Lillie was noted on the Riverside census as living at 1025 Victoria Street, retired, with Inez, age 49, enumerated as the office manager of an insurance firm. Lillie lived until 4 January, 1938. She is buried beside her husband. Inez was yet living at the same address a decade later. Her home was owned and worth $3,000. The census also notes that her highest level of education reached was “high school, 4th year.” Inez’s death date is so far undiscovered.
Otis Baker died 22 February, 1918. He is buried in Oakwood Cemetery with his wife, Mary, who outlived him by 40 years, dying on 26 May, 1958. She had remarried by 1920 to John Huggins, a paper maker in a Kalamazoo paper mill. Their son Otis lived until 4 August, 1974, dying in Van Buren, Wayne County, Michigan. His sister Ruth died in Detroit on 16 April, 1987.
Recent pictures of the Baker monument show it still as lovely and serene as when new. I can do no better than to conclude with the poem inscribed on it, which the family chose themselves: “Blest is the turf, oh doubly blessed, where weary mortals stop to rest, where life’s long journey turns to sleep, no weary pilgrims wake to weep.”
We see the still, worn body of old lady, prepared for burial by her family and laid out, most likely, upon her own bed. This photograph may have been both her first and her last. She was probably a child in the 1790s and a young wife and mother when Jane Austen wrote her literary oeuvre. It’s easy to imagine her in her prime, her story unfolding during the waning of one century and the child years of another. By the time this post-mortem image was taken, the patterns of life had been radically altered for many by the industrial revolution. The War of 1812 and the Napoleonic Wars had rolled by like awful, awesome storms. The British Queen was about to lose her dearest love. America was spilling out across a vast continent and tensions were escalating to the point of eruption between its North and South. Gentle Readers (as Charlotte Brontë might have termed you), is it a surprise that these are decades during which I would like to have lived? It is true: I covet the years of her lifespan and the dates of her birth and death.
As I do with all my found-photo souls, I will hold her close to my heart until the day arrives when I can no longer serve as her caretaker.
Post mortem cabinet card of a man in a coffin with two men standing watch overhead. Coffin is resting between two chairs. I believe this is Italian in origin. Some text is on the verso of the image, however, some silverfish damage has made most of the text illegible.
This daguerreotype of a "sleeping" man has an early mat with no binding. He wears a high collar and large white neck tie.
Unfortunately, this ambrotype is very softly focused. It can't really tolerate being blown up in size.
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8-22-11
Is there a Dr. in the house?
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This is the maroon velvet case pad of the daguerreotype of a beautiful baby girl, pictured in her coffin. A little knot of white ribbon, likely from her white gown and an obituary clipped from a newspaper have been pinned to the pad. The clipping gave me enough information to find her birth dates and to date the image. Helen Maria Spalding was born on March 8th, 1848 and died at 10 months old on January 9, 1849.
The obituary reads:
DIED
In this village, on the 9th instant, Helen Maria, only daughter of Ebenezer and Frances L. Spalding, aged 10 months.
Sleep on, loved one, sleep on.
So early gone;
To Earth, a child is lost,
To Heaven, a cherub won.
I have posted the image as well, linked below.
I noticed that Ebenezer and Frances had a young son at the time that Helen Maria died. Another girl was born the next year and two more boys in later years. I know, based on my only family history, that some families lost many children. Although I could not find death dates for any of Helen Maria siblings I did find marriage dates for all of them so know that they survived to adulthood.