Who Were They?

Here’s a pretty image that looks a tad like Donna Anspoch. It’s either her or a family member. Considering her father Levi Anspoch was one of eleven children, and mother Minnie was one of seven, it is entirely possible this was one of Donna’s cousins!

Her hat is enormous. Assuming she was an average 5′ 2″ and of slender frame, that hat has to be two feet wide! I can see flowers and feathers up there. I’m certain it was lovely in person. How exactly did one store a hat such as that?? She has a lovely dress with lots of lace, embroidery and pin tucks. By this time in photography, processes didn’t reverse colors in the way we saw in wet plate images (remember that images that look like black dresses could be yellow or red or green), so this dress was probably white or a light color. It could be a debut dress, graduation dress, or even a wedding dress. Modern generalizations would put this in the “Victorian” category but it is very obviously Edwardian to me. The photo was cut to fit into a frame and unfortunately all photographer marks are long gone.