{"id":253,"date":"2009-12-01T22:00:00","date_gmt":"2009-12-02T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/orphan-photos-32-33\/"},"modified":"2013-07-10T21:08:54","modified_gmt":"2013-07-11T02:08:54","slug":"orphan-photos-32-33","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/orphan-photos-32-33\/","title":{"rendered":"Orphan Photos #32 & #33"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a><\/td>\n\"\"<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
\"\"<\/a><\/td>\n\"\"<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

I have quite a few in my batch of photos from this same photographer.\u00a0 I\u2019m posting these two together because it seems like they are of the same person.\u00a0 What\u2019s even more interesting is that these photographs were taken by a female photographer in the late 1800s.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Before I get into the subjects of the photos, I want to take a quick jaunt about the photographer.\u00a0 The imprint on these cabinet cards reads:<\/p>\n

Mrs. Reed
\nBranch House
\nLaGrange, Mo.
\nQuincy, Ill<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Mrs. Reed was Candace McCORMICK Reed, who was born in 1818 in Tennessee.\u00a0 She married Warren Reed in 1842.\u00a0 Her and her husband relocated to Quincy, Illinois, where they opened a photography studio.\u00a0 Mrs. Reed died in 1900.\u00a0 More information about Mrs. Reed, along with additional photos can be found on the website Early Illinois Women:\u00a0 Photographs by Candace McCormick Reed (1818-1900).<\/a><\/p>\n

What also struck me as odd was the fact that there were two locations noted in the imprint.\u00a0 Looking at the map, I see that LaGrange, Missouri and Quincy, Illinois are fairly close to one another, each resting along the Mississippi River in their respective states.<\/p>\n

\"map\"
Image obtained from Google Maps<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Fortunately, there is some identifying information on these photographs, which also led me to believe the gentleman in each photo was the same person.<\/p>\n

On the back of the photograph of the couple, it says:<\/p>\n

With best wishes of
\nSister Martha<\/p>\n

3-10-90<\/p>\n

Mr. & Mrs.
\nA. L. Towles
\nLaGrange M<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The back of the other photograph simply states:\u00a0 Uncle Alfred Towels.<\/p>\n

Upon first glance, I actually thought the photographs were taken at the same time.\u00a0 However, upon closer inspection, two things stood out.\u00a0 First, the man is were a different jacket; in one photo it’s double-buttoned, in the other, single-buttoned.\u00a0 And second, the imprint is slightly different, suggesting a different time period of when the photo was taken.\u00a0 But the man certainly looks to be the same man in both photos, and it is fair to assume that \u201cA.L. Towles\u201d is \u201cAlfred Towles.\u201d<\/p>\n

Next it was off to see if I could find this gentleman records to help me identify possible descendants who may want these photographs.\u00a0 At first this was a little tricky because I was not sure which state to look in since both Missouri and Illinois are on the photograph imprint.\u00a0 Fortunately, there weren\u2019t many Alfred Towles to choose from, and two just happened to be in LaGrange, Missouri.<\/p>\n

In the 1880 census, I find an Alfred and Jane Towles living in LaGrange, Lewis, Missouri, with their children, one of whom is Alfred, born about 1850 in Missouri.\u00a0 Guessing that the photograph of the couple was taken in about 1890 (there is that date written on it, as well as the time period of the photographer), the couple look like they could be about 40-years old.<\/p>\n

I move on to the 1900 census, and find an Alfred L and Florence M Towles living in Houston, Harris, Texas.\u00a0 Alfred\u2019s birth month and year are indicated as August 1846 and the census notes he was born in Missouri.\u00a0 There is no indication as to how long they\u2019ve been married.\u00a0 So this is a likely suspect, but I need more information.<\/p>\n

I try to find a marriage record, with the available online resources (heck I can hardly afford to rent FHL films for my own families, let alone orphans!!).\u00a0 I came up empty.<\/p>\n

So I take a quick peek at the public family trees on Ancestry.\u00a0 I find a few possible matches, but one seems to be the most accurate, showing Alfred Lewis Towles born in Missouri and residing and dying in Texas.\u00a0 My hunch may be correct then.\u00a0 However, the marriage date for Alfred and Florence was \u201cabout 1898,\u201d which could be off based on the date of the photograph, or perhaps he was married before (it looks as if Florence had been married before, given there are two daughters listed with a different surname in the 1900 census and the notation for one of them is \u201cstep daughter\u201d).\u00a0 Also worth noting is that this tree listed his residence from 1870 to 1910, but does not list his parents or children.\u00a0 That being the case, I\u2019m thinking that this may be collateral relatives and want to find someone more direct to give these photos to.<\/p>\n

At any rate, I move on to other records.\u00a0 Over the weekend, I was doing some work on my own collateral folks who eventually ended up in Texas, about the same time period.\u00a0 Knowing that Family Search has death records for Texas, I headed on over in hopes of finding something.\u00a0 And I did.\u00a0 Not only did I find a death certificate for his death in 1915, but it tied him to the person found earlier in Missouri.\u00a0 It lists his parents as Alfred and Jane Towles, his birth place as Marshall, Missouri (which is located in Saline County, where I find the family in 1850), and that he is to be buried in LaGrange, Missouri.\u00a0 BINGO!<\/p>\n

My next step is to try and locate someone that wants these photographs.\u00a0 I\u2019m going to try someone with a private Ancestry tree, who seems to have a more complete picture of this family than anyone else I can find (it\u2019s hard to know for sure when the tree is private, but there are many Towles in the tree and it\u2019s even name Towles).\u00a0 I will certainly post an update if I\u2019m able to reunite these photos with family.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have quite a few in my batch of photos from this same photographer.\u00a0 I\u2019m posting these two together because it seems like they are of the same person.\u00a0 What\u2019s even more interesting is that these photographs were taken by a female photographer in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[37,36],"tags":[392],"class_list":["post-253","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-orphan-photos-identified","category-wwtts","tag-location-us-illinois","cat-37-id","cat-36-id"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3HcLI-45","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=253"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3867,"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253\/revisions\/3867"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}