My Current Favorite Photo – 52 Ancestors

All right, if I were going to commit myself to doing the 52 Ancestors in 52 weeks challenge this year I would already be more than a month behind.  So I’m not going to do that.  However, I am going to use some of the topics to help focus me to write something about the family.   This is the first one.

Last summer I got a small treasure trove of Denman family pictures which I wrote about.  Two of them were particular favorites for me, and I included one of them in the post I wrote.  The other I mentioned, is the earliest image of my great-grandfather F.A. Denman I have ever seen.  It was marked on the back as circa 1892 along with his name.  I’m not sure about whose handwriting it was.  There are only a few clues on this picture to help put a date on it.  It was printed (the photograph was presumably taken) by Falor Bros. in Oberlin, Ohio.  You can see the imprint faintly at the bottom of the photo.  It is a cabinet card size and note the scrolls at the top and bottom of the picture. 

If F.A. had gone to school in Oberlin I would speculate that this was a class or school picture based on the scrolls.  However, as far as I know he did not ever attend any school in Oberlin.  In addition, if the 1892 date is accurate he was about 26 years old, and had been married around 2 years.  He and Mary L. Minor married in November 1890 in Wakeman, and it seems possible that this was taken around that date (or possibly prior to it).  However, if it was taken in commemoration of their wedding I would think it would be a couple photo.  If it was taken just prior I would think there would be a matching  photo of Mary by the same photographer.  Since there isn’t such a photo of her (in my possession at least), I wonder if F.A. had it taken to give to her when they were courting.

I have begun an online search for the Falor Bros photography studio in Oberlin, and found just a little in the way of hints so far.  There is a picture in the Library of Congress picture collection that shows a Falor & Smedley studio in Oberlin, which was actively in business in 1888 and 1889.  I have not yet been able to verify these dates or any name change for the business.  A hint from the reference desk at the Oberlin Public Library did send me to the website for the Oberlin Heritage Center and hunting around on their site resulted in my finding a spreadsheet from city directories of Oberlin for the right time period.  This resource supports that Falor Brothers were photographers from 1891, with a business address of the Goodrich Block. So our picture seems likely to have been taken in 1891 or 1892.