Rescuing Orphaned Photographs

My friend Mary Beth Marion saw the start of my blog and sent me a link to her blog called Grandma's Picture Box. What a great and interesting blog!  I had no idea people did this.  I thought I'd post a couple of the more interesting (wink wink) hairstyles I've run across in these photos.

She rescues orphaned photographs and tries to find the descendants of the person in the photo to get...as they say...the rest of the story.  There are some great stories on there and I encourage you to drop by for a visit.  I also collect these antique cabinet cards but use them in my artwork.  Most of the time they have no names on them but, thanks to MB, I'll start looking to see if they do.

So now I have my own mystery to solve.  I have an old camera that I purchased in a leather case.  When I got it home I found the following scratched inside the leather cover.

Walter F Layer
Colonel
US Marine Corps

So, maybe I'll do a little research starting on Ancestry.com and see if I can find out more about him. Here is a photo of the camera.

Cabinet Photo Cards
Now, for a quick lesson on photo cabinet cards.  "Carte de visite" cards (or CDVs) were invented in France in the early 1850s and were photos adhered to a card backing sized about 2.5 x 4 inches. Popular during the Civil War, the public began collecting no only their own photos but photos of celebrities of the day (mostly in the north) such as Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant.

By the late 1860s or early 1870s, CDVs were quickly replaced with the larger "cabinet cards" sized 4.5 x 6.5 inches. Cabinet cards most likely got their name from being displayed on cabinets in Victorian parlors during the 19th century.  Normally cabinet cards have information about the photographer on the back or front in the form of a logo, and were often used as post cards. Near the end of the century more photographer advertising was used on the reverse side as advertising became more commonplace.

I've read that the earlier ones were sepia toned and the later ones looked more black and white.  So, there might be a tip to dating a photo if the clothing wasn't a hint.  Their peak was most likely between 1870 and 1895 and are rarely found dated after 1906, but were still produced into the 1920s.  Their decline in popularity no doubt coincided with the introduction of the Kodak Box Brownie camera in 1900 when the public started taking their own photos.

There you  have it.  More than you ever wanted to know about cabinet cards.

So, before you toss out that old box of photos in grandma's attic, see if anyone in the family wants to keep them or knows who's actually in the photo and document the information.  You may be surprised what treasures you'll find.

I'll keep you posted on what I found out about Colonel Walter Layer!

If you  have any interesting stories I would love to hear them in the comments below.