Posted on 02/22/2009 6:09:44 PM PST by Dallas59
I found the negatives for these pictures in a box of darkroom items at a garage sale 15 years ago. I have been haunted by them ever since. I have scoured these pictures looking for clues as to the identity of this family. Now I will ask my Flickr friends to help
Seems nobody really knows.
Those are some great photos. I can see why they caught your imagination.
The best clue is the Skyline picture of the car from 10/19/40.
The license plate is a 1940 version, yellow with blue numbers 51-223.
The Delaware DMV could look that up.
In Delaware, a small state, the license plates stay in families for the most part. The smaller the number, the more cache and worth the plate has. People sell their plates. The numbers 1 to 999 date from the first year of issue, 1909.
The homes in the other pictures are brick, which is consistent with a lot of homes in northern Delaware, closer to the PA. or MD. borders. Houses in central and southern Delaware were very rural back in the 1940s and would be wood houses.
Starting with the DMV would be the best bet. The other pictures, i.e. DC tidal basin during Cherry Blossom time, etc. would be consistent with a family in Delaware taking a trip.
There is another photo that shows the names Ellie and Herb from a Christmas photo. If those names match the DMV registration, you have a major clue.Chances are that the family still exists here in Delaware or Maryland area.
I’m sure someone from this family would be thrilled to get these back. Many of the shots are very well done, by someone who had training or was a very good amatuer. Lighting, composition are very well done.
Safe to say most if not all of those folks are dead
Especially as there are millions and millions of unidentified photos ...
Isn’t that my Aunt Minna’ standing behind the cake with hat on?
Looks like DC Suburbs to me (kid w/airplane)
down off Georgia Ave near RockingHorse Lane.
I would bet those DMV records are long gone. Depends on the policy of the agency concerning retention of records, but here is one example - the Department of Labor requires Injury Compensation files to be retained for thirty years after the last recorded activity on the claim. After that point, the records may be destroyed.
There is a Skyline Drive in Canon City, Colorado. And it snows there.
Indeed. But it is rather large to be letting loose without some sort of digital proportional radio control setup to guide it. I wonder what it used for guidance...if anything.
RC models weren't affordable or commercially available until the '50s.
Yabut. Is it an “big deal” if it snows there?
The brick townhomes look like those that were up near Fort Stevens in D.C. Gone now for large apartment buildings. Woman in the ‘snow’ picture looks like the older sister of my old Aunt Queenie who married Howard Crouch. She’s still alive but I don’t know how you would get her on a computer to look at the pix. LOL
I enlarged the plate as much as MY computer would give any readability, it could be Delaware ? hard to make out. Someone with good equipment could do it .. also check who owned the house w/garage from 30 years ago.
Good luck. I have several very nice photographs of unknowns. I’ve often wondered who they were and what their lives were like.
The short of it is that these photos end up in antique stores and the like either because there was no one left to bequeath them to (end of the bloodline) or no one cared enough about the distant/unfamiliar relative to keep the photos.
I always think it’s a shame to see lovely photos in a basket in an antique store going for a buck apiece.
Nice photos, by the way. Someone took them who knew what they were doing.
The photo of the car has “Skyline Drive” written in the snow on the car. Is that what you mean?
There is a Sterling VA (Sterling Dodge?) which is a suburb of DC. Those pics remind me of the DC area - either VA or MD.
Here’s some comments from another site (reddit?) that the original poster had an interesting response on (Used your key words!):
“The 1930 Census lists Herbert E. King and his wife Eleanor, their son Herbert C. (age 11/12) living with his parents John and Florence King on Slate Road in New Castle, Delaware.
Fits the Herb and Ellie picture. Fits the 12 year old son in the 1940 Skyline Drive picture.
Who knows...just a guess.
Slate Road doesn’t seem to exist anymore, but from further in the census it appears to have been near Red Lion Road. Anybody know?”
I went to a garage sale here in Tennessee about 10 years ago, and bought a big box (the size a cooking stove would be in) full of old papers. I bought the box for $1.
When I got home I found in the box stacks of old sheet music from the 1890s, a hand (penciled) manuscript of an old “Negro Spiritual,” titled “Were You There When They Crucified My Lord,” and the actual published sheet music version. Also in the box were about 15 old black and white photos (not prints) of Constantinople at the turn of the century, including one of a state wedding of some sort. Also many photos from the same era of buildings in Berlin, beautiful churches, etc., that I suspect were leveled during WWII and no longer exist.
Some of the Contantinople photos have cannons lined up outside a mosque, and the Turkish soldiers being inspected by what loooks like German troops.Some of these are scenes from some kind of battle.
I have those framed on my office wall now. I suspect all this is valuable, and need to check on it.
This is what is really sad. These items were treasured by someone at one time, but some grandkid, etc., ended up inheriting it, didn’t appreciate it and sold it all for $1 in a garage sale.
I LOVE garage sales!!!
Nah, that’s Ma Joad from ‘Grapes of wrath’ with a young Henry Fonda as Tom Joad.
Could they be wearing Easter bonnets? The hats seem pretty fancy. Easter was on March 24 in 1940 and on April 13 in 1941. Which date is more likely for the cherry blossoms?
The photos are really sharp. I am guessing someone in that family owned a proffesional camera, maybe a 4X5 inch sliding plate type.
When I bought my great aunt’s house I inherited a bunch of photos no one could identify.
All I know is one of my relatives was a really hot red head back in the days of early color photography!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.