Please Visit Me

 I've had a few problems with this postcard.  I'm  fairly certain that I've got the message right, but the names and address....let's just say that my handwriting is better and I've got lousy handwriting.

This card is postmarked, "FAYETTE CITY, PA 5 PM 1911"  It's addressed to "Miss Bella Kahoir (?) 935 Terrace (?) Str., McKeesport, Pa."  And the message, "Dear Sister, When is any one of you coming out to se me love all Moroi (?)"

For someone like me who grew up in coal country, western Pennsylvania, this is a fascinating card.  Fayette City is the sight of a legendary coal mining disaster.  On December 7, 1907, an explosion at the Naomi Mine killed 34 miners.  Fayette City was, and still is, a pretty small town.  Those 34 deaths pretty much wiped out the working age, male population of the community.  Perhaps Bella moved to McKeesport, a mill town on the Monogahela River, south of Pittsburgh after the disaster.  Perhaps Moroi had married a miner and moved to Fayette City. In either case, there's a good chance  that one of the sisters, possibly both, lost a husband, or father or brother in the mines.

When I was in high school, we had to take a course in Pennsylvania history.  I can remember spending a couple of weeks going over mill and mine disasters.  In 1907, most coal companies would have given the family of a dead miner a few hundred dollars, a months free rent in company owned housing and then that family would have been evicted and left to fend for itself.  If a young widow didn't find another husband or a job of her own it was starvation, homelessness or prostitution.

The lady on the card is Phyllis Dare, and English stage actress born in 1890, died 1975.  She was noted for her work in musicals.

Montana Glass Negatives

One of the reasons that I hate antique dealers is that they break up collections of photographs to increase their profits. I purchased these images in Montana. It's kind of the dream of all photo collectors to discover a large collection of images from an unknown, though clearly, talented photographer. Looking at this group of images, I think I may have found one, but with only a handful of the negatives still left together, we'll never know. I think the image of the farm family one of the strongest photographs I've ever seen. The portraits of the cowboy and beekeeper are amazing. I showed these to a movie costumer who dated the clothing to the late 19th to early 20th century. Because there is no mother in the farm scene, I think the photographer might have been the mother, making her glass negaties, at home, in the kitchen. Click on images to see them in a larger window.

I used to work in a photo lab where I had access to an 8x10 enlarger. I was able to use it to make high quality blow-ups. These images were made directly from the negatives, rather than copy negs made from contact prints.