Monthly Archives: June 2017

Houseboat Heaven

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Vintage photo, circa 1920s – 1930s.

Price:  $6.00         Size:  4 and 1/4 x 2 and 5/8″

Three ladies

I love houseboats:  There is something so romantic about them (riverboats, too.) So “houseboat heaven” came to mind immediately upon finding the photo, and the term stuck (and never got unstuck, lol. That’s redundant but, no matter.) But I realize, as I’m posting this, that the watercraft in question could be something other than the type involved in my (just now identified) longing to set up house on the water or meander down a river in rustic comfort. Rather than houseboat, the vessel could be a small ferry….In any case, the image shows a woman posed, relaxing on an inside railing, smiling for the camera. On our left we see a partial view of the woman’s friend, in flounced dress, her hand on one of the thin uprights. You get the feeling she’s chatting with someone outside of the picture. Both ladies are elegantly dressed. And the vessel….is charming:  nothing too fancy, wooden, with her “house” portion curving around, and a shallow, covered deck off of the house, as part of the bigger deck surface as a whole. Note the nice scroll work above the door and the scalloped roof edging….All-in-all, a beautifully captured moment, from a casually elegant or elegantly casual 😉 evening spent on the water, with good friends. (That includes the boat!)

Handsome Guy And Baby At House Number 14

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Old photo, circa late 1920s – early 1930s.

Price:  $10.00       Size:  2 and 1/2 x 4 and 1/8″

Happy Father’s Day!

Found at an antique store in Monterey, California, in a huge amount of loose photos from various unrelated families:  It’s possible there are more to go along with this one, but none jumped out as related, and this photo was just too beautiful to pass up. A great one for Father’s Day. There is no i.d. on the back, only “Velox” (in an oval) for the printing paper of the photo. It may be from the U.S. or could very likely be from “across the pond,” as they say. Per the UK site Early Photography, the Velox in oval is circa 1929. And, in peering into the photo for clues, one almost expects to read a label on whatever that is in the left corner of the window (as if it might show some brand name particular to England, for instance.) On second look it’s maybe just a crockery dish placed in a sunny window for starting a seedling. And that’s a sleeve garter that the dad is wearing, by the way.

Source:  “Early Photography:  Velox.” http://www.earlyphotography.co.uk/site/entry_F53.html  (accessed June 23, 2017).

Sea Gull – A Boat

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Divided Back, Real Photo Postcard, unused. Circa 1907 – 1918.

Price:  $6.00

Per Playle’s (a great reference for dating RPPCs, thus we use it all the time) this particular style of AZO stamp box, with all four triangles pointing up, is dated at 1904 – 1918, however, since it’s a divided back card, it would need to be December 1907 at the earliest. The type of watercraft is, for me, non-boat expert that I am, in question. Houseboat…?…. maybe, maybe not. In any case, we see her name on the bow,  “Sea Gull.”  And there’s the vague image of the skipper at the helm, standing, facing the sun. Amidships (can this term be used for small craft?) we see the silhouette of a seated man in a hat. On shore, in the background are some buildings and a large stand of evergreens.

Source:  “Real Photo Postcard Stamp Boxes. A – B.” playle.com. (accessed June 13, 2017).

Sweetwater Dam, Near San Diego, California

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Undivided back, unused postcard. Circa 1906. Publisher:  E. P. Charlton & Co., San Diego, California. Number or series:  788.

Price:  $6.00

The Sweetwater Dam is located about twelve miles east of San Diego, and was first constructed in 1888, but raised and retrofitted several times over the next few decades. The construction process back in 1888 for the dam involved horses and mules carrying stone from the quarry to the site in carts.

This card is one from our Lena Davis Collection. Click below to see the beautiful flourish-y details of this portion of the reverse from the publisher:  a great design (as is the easier-to-see stamp box).

Heartfelt wishes and wistful thoughts, from the sender:

“Dear Friend Lena. Many thanks for the Kind greetings and in stead of an Easter card will enclose photos hoping you will read in it heartiest wishes for a true Easter as its name implies. So sorry Mrs. Hall is so poorly. Give her my best wishes. And dear girl how I wish for the sake of my boys and girls, I were better looking. When looking at it think how much I love you and desire for you the best in life and may our heavenly Father bless you abundantly. Love to all from your old friend Dee French. Mar. 1914.”

Source:  Sweetwater Dam. n.d. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweetwater_Dam (accessed June 12, 2017).

Ucilious Calvert Sterquell

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A male given name we hadn’t encountered yet:  Ucilious. From research for the Necks To Nothing post, Ucilious Calvert Sterquell was married to Mary Louise Henley. He was born in Baltimore, Maryland in 1891, was a veteran of WWI and died in Waco, Texas in 1947. How many others were found named Ucilious? From a brief search online at Ancestry, all entries are for the man himself, other than another gentleman with Ucilious as a middle name. This is proving to be an interesting sideline…the unusual first names category. Probably we could keep going forever, for in looking for one person you come across others…

Source:  Find A Grave. Memorial #54015646. Find A Grave. http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi.

Shenandoah V. Gray

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Our “Unusual First Names” category has been a little neglected….so, here’s an entry for a beautiful given name, found on the 1920 Federal Census, Pittsburgh, PA:

Shenandoah….

Curiously, no other records were found for Shenandoah V. Gray, who was born in Virginia, about 1870, and married to Charles D. Gray sometime before the 1920 census was taken. Possibly she went by her middle name, but even so, nothing was located, though a more exhaustive search could definitely be made.

Source:  Year: 1920; Census Place: Pittsburgh Ward 4, Allegheny, Pennsylvania; Roll: T625_1519; Page: 6A; Enumeration District: 378; Image: 1059. (Ancestry.com)

The Dewey Post Card Co.

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The Dewey Post Card Company was a postcard publisher out of Dewey, Oklahoma, according to our Grand River Dam card. And there may be non-digitized info out there somewhere, as in city directories, that would shed more light on the company, and certainly one would presume that other postcards from them must have survived. (Nothing showing at the moment.) The one thing we did find though, is the publisher’s connection to the photo chronicles of one of the most important events in Waco, Texas history, and a slight glimpse into downtown happenings maybe a month or two afterwards:

From The Waco News-Tribune. (Waco, TX) July 22, 1953.

The storm referenced above was the devastating F5-strength Waco Tornado that tore into (descended on – an even better description – from the Teardrop Memorial) the city on May 11th,1953, resulting in the tragic loss of 114 lives, as well as injuries to around 600 and property loss valued at the 1953 rate of over 50 million….The hail before the tornado had become as big as baseballs….From the sound of the ad, Dewey was one of several (?) enterprises set up at the “Waco storm photo stand” downtown at 5th and Austin, downtown being one of the worst hit areas. (Was it still mostly rubble at this point?) See the links below for detailed information and photos.

Sources:  “Notice!” Dewey Post Card Co. Ad. The Waco News-Tribune, July 22, 1953, Wednesday, p. 15. (Newspapers.com).

1953 Waco tornado outbreak. n.d. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Waco_tornado_outbreak. (accessed June 11, 2017).

Simmons, Brian M. “The Most Horrible Storm: A Firsthand Account of the 1953 Waco Tornado.” May 8, 2012. Baylor University’s The Texas Collection. (http://www.baylor.edu/lib/texas/) Accessed June 11, 2017.

Grand River Dam And Lake, Northeastern Oklahoma

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Divided back, unused postcard. Publisher:  Dewey Post Card Co., Dewey, Oklahoma. Printer:  Curt Teich. Genuine Curteich – Chicago. “C. T. American Art.” No. or series:  2B88 – N. Circa 1953.

Price:  $5.00

“Length of dam 5680 ft., height 150 ft., length of lake 60 miles with 1000 miles shoreline. A playground of four states. Power plant capacity 200,000,000 KWH. Four 20,000 h. p. turbines, four 16,000 KVA generators.”

There’s a few similar-view-of-the-dam linen postcards that we see online, however none at the moment by this publisher, the Dewey Post Card Co. Per the publisher research we’re estimating the date of this postcard at 1953.

The Grand River Dam is an a.k.a. for the Pensacola Dam, in Northeastern Oklahoma, which is the longest multiple-arch dam in the world. Construction was started in 1938 and completed in 1940.

Source:  Pensacola Dam. n.d. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pensacola_Dam (accessed June 12, 2017).

Rocky River Bridge, Cleveland, Ohio

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Divided back, used postcard. Postmarked June 7, 1913 from Cleveland, Ohio. Publisher:  Wm. Frank, Cleveland, OH. Number or series:  1361 – 5.

Price:  $7.00

The publisher logo is eye-catching and worth cropping to highlight below.

The card appears to be addressed to:   “Mr. Ernest Hain, 312 West 24th St., New York.”  Though no records were found under this name or Haim, Hamm etc. that might fit for location and time frame.

The sender, whose name we’re guessing to be Edgar, wrote in french:   “Ca va bien mais seulement il fait très sec dans la journée. les salutations de ton ami Edgar.” 

“Everything’s going well but it’s very dry during the day, regards from your friend Edgar.”

Five of six…

As for the subject on the front of the postcard, the Rocky River Bridge or Detroit Rocky River Bridge (1910 – 1980) was the fifth (of six) bridges to be built at this location that crosses the Rocky River, connecting the Ohio cities of Rocky River and Lakewood. It was replaced in 1980 by its current structure. The old bridge in the postcard was a record-holder for a time:  When it was completed in 1910, it was,  “the longest stretch of unreinforced concrete in the world”  at 208 feet.

Source:  The Cleveland Historical Team, “Detroit Rocky River Bridge.” (clevelandhistorical.org). Accessed June 9, 2017.

Hugh Ester Bayles

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Divided back, unused with writing and/or photographer stamp. Three Real Photo Postcards of Hugh Ester Bayles, taken in San Jose, CA, by photographer Enrico Bambocci. Circa 1913 and 1918. Solio stamp box.

Availability Status:  SOLD

So, we’re a little late with this military-related post, for the prior Memorial Day, but nevertheless….three wonderful RPPCs of Hugh Ester Bayles. Hugh was the son of Levi Bayles and Lydia Mitchell, and was born August 21, 1892 in Paxico, Kansas (still a small town today). The 1910 Federal Census shows Hugh, his parents, and his siblings, Charles, Ruth and Homer, living in Mokelumne, Calaveras Co., CA. At the time of the first World War draft registration, he was living at 918 Harliss Ave., San Jose, CA, and working as a truck driver for the Raisch Co.[?] located on Auzerais Ave. He enlisted April 30, 1918. He was married to Bessie Irene Way, prior to 1939. He died November 30, 1982 at age 90.

At age 21, about 1913, San Jose, California. The photographer props at this time include an animal skin (uggh) of….is that a badger? (poor guy) and a vase holding geraniums.

Hugh, age 21. Different day, as he is wearing a different (pin-striped) suit and a wider tie.

In uniform, at about age 26, circa 1918.

Sources:  Registration State: California; Registration County: Los Angeles; Roll: 1544322. Ancestry.com. U.S., World War I Draft Registration Cards, 1917-1918.

The National Archives at St. Louis; St. Louis, Missouri; World War II Draft Cards (4th Registration) for the State of California; Record Group Title: Records of the Selective Service System, 1926-1975; Record Group Number: 147. (Ancestry.com)

Paxico, Kansas. n.d. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paxico,_Kansas (accessed May 30, 2017).

Ancestry.com. U.S., Department of Veterans Affairs BIRLS Death File, 1850-2010.

Year: 1910; Census Place: Mokelumne, Calaveras, California; Roll: T624_73; Page: 13B; Enumeration District: 0011; FHL microfilm: 1374086. (Ancestry.com)

State of California. California Death Index, 1940-1997. Sacramento, CA, USA: State of California Department of Health Services, Center for Health Statistics. (Ancestry.com)

Find A Grave Memorial# 140189413 for Bessie I. (Way) Bayles