Came across this photo just recently. This is a photo of Sarah Hammell’s parents. The photo itself has had a bit of a hard life (although overall it is in pretty good shape). It was originally mounted on a cabinet card. Subsequently the cabinet card was glued into a cardboard frame of more recent vintage. Among other things, the cardboard frame hid the name and location of the studio where the photo was taken. When I removed the cabinet card from the frame into which it was glued, the glue took some of the surface of the cabinet card when it separated (none of the photo, though). I was able to soak the bits of cabinet card surface off the cardboard frame and reconstruct some of the writing and printing that had been torn off the cabinet card. The name of the photo studio remains illegible, but the location of it is easily read: Mount Vernon, Ohio.

Mount Vernon is in Knox County and the village of Martinsburg is nearby. Martinsburg is significant because that is where William and Martha Rine evidently moved from their earlier home in Coshocton County (where John and Sarah Hammell’s wedding took place). Presumably this photo was taken after that move.

You will recognize Martha right away from the photo of her smoking her pipe. She also bears a strong resemblance to her granddaughter Addie.

One of the big questions about this photo is: who is the child? If the photo was taken about 1885, the child could be William and Martha’s youngest, Willis. However Willis passed away in 1885 at about age 2. William was about 50 when Willis was born, but looks significantly older than that in this photo, at least to me. But then, William passed away in 1899 at age 67 and he looks older than that to me in this photo also, which is not possible. So maybe they just look older than what we’re used to for their chronological age.

Could the child be a grandchild? The information I have on the descendants of William and Martha is incomplete, but from what I do have, they only had a couple of grandchildren before William passed away, and they were both girls.

So although my confidence in this is low, for the moment I’m going to assume the child is Willis and therefore the photo was taken in 1885. If so, William is 53 and Martha is 48.

I would almost be inclined to question the identities given for the adults in this photo except that the woman looks very much like Martha in the other photo we have of her. So I think we’re stuck with the reality that these people look a lot older than their chronological age in this photo.

Feel free to draw your own conclusions.

In any event, Martha was the first, firstborn daughter in the string of six written about in yesterday’s post.