It doesn't read all that well, so I almost cropped out the white card, but there is a very faint, embossed credit that can, with a little effort, be deciphered. "Frommeyer, Hanover." No, not Hanover, Germany or Hanover, New Hampshire, but Hanover, PA. These last three cabinet cards that I'm posting all date back to my early days of collecting photographs, and when I started back in high school, I lived in a small town in western Pennsylvania, so Hanover, PA makes sense. But that's not why I'm placing this card's origins in my old home state. When I went to Google and typed in the photographer's name and home town I was surprised that one of the first hits that came up was from The New Found Photography. It seems that back in 2011 I bought an envelope of cabinet cards and one of them was from the studio of D.A. Frommeyer from, you guessed it, Hanover, PA.
It may seem highly unlikely that this card, that I've owned for more than forty years, should be from the same studio as one I purchased five years ago. Give it some thought though and it's not all that strange. David A. Frommeyer, a native of Pennsylvania, born in 1850, ran a photo studio from 1886 to 1911. Let's say that David averaged 1,000 commissions a year for the 25 years he was in business. That's 25,000 separate photographs floating around out there. And that's assuming there was only one usable image per session. More than likely, there were more. Who knows how many people posed for David A. Frommeyer. Who knows how many usable shots came from each sitting.
Just for laughs I went to one of my favorite research sites, the ever popular eBay. It didn't take me long to find an overpriced cabinet card taken by D.A. Frommeyer from Hanover, Pennsylvania.
My wife's in-laws are related to The Frommeyers of Hanover, PA. in fact she has and old photo album with about 10 family from Frommmeyer's studio including Mr. Frommeyer himself.
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