This photo is interesting for quite a few reasons. First is the ladies’ Victorian hats (and Victorian dress in general). Second is the ribbons the guys are wearing, apparently showing the state of their birth. Third is the way Grandpa Arthur McClain dominates the photo with his dark-colored hat that seems out of place in relation to what the other guys are wearing. Also how Grandma Addie had to be placed considerably further to the side than the other ladies to be seen around Grandpa’s head and hat. Fourth is the fact that Roy Hutchins (Bessie’s eventual husband) is in the photo. I think this may be the only photo I’ve seen of him. Fifth is the mix of smiles, almost smiles and serious expressions that reflect the changing attitudes toward how one should look in a photograph. Sixth is just to wonder about the sort of event at which this photo was taken. Seventh is that the couples on the left and in the middle either are married or soon would be, while the couple on the right were not and never would be (as far as I can tell). I could go on. You can come up with your own observations.

Let’s start with identifications. The ladies from the left are: Bessie Hammell, Addie Hammell and Lena Saylor. Lena was a friend of Addie and Bessie (or perhaps a fellow piano student[?], at least) as shown in the photo from this post. The guys from the left are Roy Hutchins, Arthur McClain and “someone.” The guys are wearing ribbons that read (from left): “Minnesota,” “Nebraska,” “Minnesota.” I take these to indicate the wearer’s state of birth, since that works for Roy Hutchins and Arthur McClain.

Mom identified the “someone” as Roy Nutting and also thought the lady behind him was his wife. But assuming the guys’ ribbons do indeed indicate their state of birth, that doesn’t work for Roy Nutting, since he was born in Oregon, not Minnesota. It also doesn’t work for the fellow Lena Saylor eventually married (named Paul Dawson), because he was born in Kansas. (Besides, it seems unlikely that they had even met at the time this photo was probably taken.) So as much as I hate to leave a mystery unsolved, I’m afraid the guy on the right will have to remain unidentified at this point.

A big question is when this photo was taken. My best guess is that it was sometime in early-to-mid 1909. I’ll elaborate on this at the end so you can skip it if you aren’t interested. If that is right, Arthur and Addie were the only couple married at the time the photo was taken.

I’ve written some about Roy and Bessie’s relationship in previous posts. This one summarizes as well as any, I think. Arthur and Addie’s relationship is one of the dominant themes of this blog, of course.

If you’re curious, Lena Saylor lived pretty much her whole life in Albany. She was born there in 1890. She married Paul Dawson in 1917, and they had three children. Paul passed away in 1940 and Lena in 1963. They are buried together at Riverside Cemetery.

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Concerning the date…

(Feel free to stop reading here if chronological details don’t interest you.)

I could be wrong, but I tend to doubt Grandma and Grandpa would have been out with other couples like this when they had a newborn at home. Certainly there were grandparents around who could have babysat, but I’m guessing bottle feeding was either nonexistent or extremely rare at this time. I’ll run with that assumption anyway. So the photo was probably taken before Mom (Florence) was born and probably before Grandma was pregnant with her. So that puts us somewhere in early-to-mid 1909 at the latest.

I don’t know how long Bessie and Roy Hutchins had known each other before they were married in December 1910. I have the impression that it was not a long time. So that argues for a date as close to the end of 1910 as other factors allow. On the other hand, if Bessie and Roy had known each other for some years before they married, possibly this photo was taken earlier—even before Arthur and Addie were married in 1908.

Another consideration is the style of dress and the style of the photograph. Styles seem to have changed pretty rapidly in the early 1910s from Victorian to Georgian. So that puts a squishy upper limit on the date of the photograph. This sort of dress and style of photograph would not have appeared by 1915, I don’t imagine.

So while there is some uncertainty here, generally things seem to point toward a date in later 1908 or earlier 1909. Maybe a year earlier than that isn’t entirely out of the question. But anything later probably is.