Who Were They?

Army R.O.T.C.

Mrs Marvel

November 15, 2013

Delaware ROTC Headquarters

I have neglected you all, dear photo loving friends, and for that I apologize. I just didn’t seem to have enough time to do anything the past couple weeks and I didn’t realize that so much time had passed!

Hopefully you are a forgiving lot, heh. For this week’s Sepia Saturday we have a prompt showing a doorway. The doorway on this photo of the Delaware Army R.O.T.C. leads to a Headquarters building flanked with wooden barracks un an unpaved/ungroomed plot of land. The young men pictured supposedly include my grandfather Horace A. Nunn, but I can’t discern his face among them. My mother or sister might have better luck.

Horace was born in 1902. If he was in college during his stint in the R.O.T.C. we can guess he was about 18 years of age, and so this photo is from approximately 1920-1921. Any military historians who can better date this, please comment! I am only guessing he was college aged because that is my experience – R.O.T.C. was open to college boys. But, military uniforms are often a good way to date photos, and I know nothing about them.

UPDATE: A site visitor schooled me that R.O.T.C. may not be understood outside of the USA, my apologies! R.O.T.C. stands for Reserve Officers Training Corps, and was designed to train future military leaders. Established in 1862, it was a requirement for men attending a land-grant college to participate in R.O.T.C. A land-grant college is a federally funded college or university, and to retain federal funding the college must offer agriculture, science, military science and engineering. Up until 1862 apparently, most colleges offered a liberal-arts curriculum. While a man who joins the military after college can become an office without R.O.T.C. it is preferred that he have completed the training during school. The practice of compulsory R.O.T.C. spread to many private universities, until the 1960s, and now it is voluntary for men to join. Many of my male friends in college were in R.O.T.C. We called their weekends away “doing the green thing.”

Hopefully I won’t neglect you again, thank you for sticking with me! For more photos of doorways from around the world, please click over to Sepia Saturday. You will be happy you did!

Come on in!

Last in bed

Mrs Marvel

3 comments

October 23, 2013

Last in bed puts out the light

Another fascinating stereoscopic image from about the 1890s, this time showing an intimate moment between man and wife. The card is #17 in a series and entitled “last in bed puts out the light.”

As before, I pulled one piece of the image to manipulate a bit so we can try to see better what is happening. The couple are preparing for bed. Note that the lamp is on the woman’s side of the bed, so I wonder if she will get stuck with the domestic task. The man has draped his clothing over the foot of the bed and it appears the woman has draped her dress over a chair.

The card was made by Webster & Albee Publishers, in Rochester, NY. Apparently the cards were exclusive as they state “Sold only by canvassers.” I am not sure what a canvasser was.

An hour before the wedding

Mrs Marvel

3 comments

October 14, 2013

I often see stereoscopes for sale in the antique shops. They were the first real home media, enabling people to see foreign lands, exotic animals, and even the simple and mundane of other people’s lives, all from the comfort of their own parlour. The stereoscope will remind many of you of the View-Master of our childhood (during the 70s). You could easily see the depth and clarity of an image because you were actually looking at two images taken from slightly different angles, thereby giving one a perception of 3D. The stereoscope of old works on the same principle. Two images, from slightly different angles, were placed on a card. The card was placed into a viewer that had a thin divider in its center. The person then held the viewer up to their eyes and that divider made it so that the left eye saw the left image and the right eye saw the right image. A 3D view!

This particular stereoscope struck me as it is entitled “An hour before the wedding.” An hour before the wedding and she is still getting her hair dressed?! Yikes! Modern brides will be gathered in the waiting area with their bridesmaids, awaiting the commencement of the wedding march or whatever music. But, a Victorian wedding might be taking place in the parlour, while the bride is getting ready in the bedroom. It was a very different world, was it not?

I pulled out one side of the image and tried to play with it so we could see it a bit better.

The poufy sleeve of the woman to the left of the bride belies the 1890s or 1900s as the timeframe for the image. It is unfortunate that the image is damaged in its center, so quite difficult to tell what is in the bride’s hands. You can see her shoes sitting on the floor, flowers on the dresser, and her friends dressing her hair. I do so wish we could see her dress!

New Beginnings

Mrs Marvel

21 comments

October 11, 2013

Launching a new venture

This Sepia Saturday shows the HMAS Albatross during construction in 1928. The challenge, however is to find photos showing new beginnings. When I think of new beginnings, I think of new homes, babies, weddings, starting school, and the cycles of life illustrated through our seasons of planting, budding, growing, and harvesting. Just recently I stopped into my favorite antique stall and collected a variety of images. Among them was the photo below.

Bride, baby, dog, house, spring

A bride in her lovely wedding clothes, replete with long trailing veil, holding a baby, in front of a flowering garden. If we imagine well enough this could also be her new home, and her new dog, maybe even her new sister-in-law. I was going to save this for a series of wedding photos to be posted in the spring, but could there be a better image to capture the concept this week?

And as a coincidence, this is on the back of this photo:

Lovely lady standing by a pond

A crooked picture of a lady standing by a pond…with a boat on it. :-)

To find out how others met the challenge this week, click the Sepia Saturday banner at the top of this post. You will be happy you did!

Release the hounds!

Mrs Marvel

2 comments

October 10, 2013

Guns, dogs, and loads of fun!

This wonderful image from the early 20th century shows a hunting party, paused before they went off to rid the world of ducks or geese or some other wretched nuisance. (I jest, don’t worry) The group of 6 men and 1 boy are stopped on a small footbridge over a creek. Note that even the child has his own shotgun. I see 2 dogs, 7 long guns, 4 mustaches, 1 cigar and a bowtie. The small dogs suggest to me they were going for some sort of burrowing animal. The terriers were bred to go into underground burrows and bring out the prey. Whatever their quarry, I am certain they enjoyed tramping about the countryside all day, even if they came home empty handed.

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