Sepia Saturday provides bloggers with an opportunity to share their history through the medium of photographs. Historical photographs of any age or kind become the launchpad for explorations of family history, local history and social history in fact or fiction, poetry or prose, words or further images.
I’m not sticking with the theme today – which suggests boxes and paper and factory workers. Instead, I’m continuing with what I started last week.
My grandmother Eveline Coates had several photographs of people I presumed to be her “English relatives” and I didn’t know anything about them. As I went through her photographs, I tried to match them to the people in the picture of a wedding party below. The first person identified was the groom, George Elgey.
(Other posts related to this group are: Letters from the HMS Birmingham, The Clue on the Cake, George’s Wedding Photo Part 1 and Part 2.)
The fellow on the left, standing next to the groom, is next.
I have one picture of a young man identified only as John.
John
George Elgey
If you read the post about George Elgey, you might notice some similarities between the picture of John above and George at right. Their clothing looks identical – except for the ties – and even the ties have a similar look. I thought John and George looked like they could be related.
The photographs were taken by the same photographer:
Mack, The Photographer, 12 Holmeside, Sunderland – although the papers they are printed on are slightly different.
I look at things like postcard paper and photographers now, but I didn’t when I was first working with these pictures years ago!
There is another photograph that is identified as John Elgey. I assumed that John is the one with the X over his head since there is only one name on the back of the picture. A little older here – but it could be him.
Time to compare them side by side.
(Sorry about my poor cropping technique that made every picture a different size!)
They looked like a match to me.
After identifying John, I was stumped by the rest of the men as none of the other photographs seemed to match. Trying to match up the rest of the girls and women wasn’t easy either. And I still wasn’t sure how my grandmother was related to George, Ethel and John Elgey.
Thankfully, my mother provided copies of some letters that held additional clues. But that’s for another day…..
Please visit other Sepia Saturday participants who may have thought inside or outside of the box for today’s prompt.
Such handsome men, and a good study in comparing features.
Whata good looking chap John was – that mouth! Handsome men and lovely ladies.
It looks like a good match to me too. Sadly the best records of identity were preserved the old fashioned way – in someone’s memory. It was faster than a computer but too easily lost in time.
What a great Sepia post, and such handsome good looks too! Nice treasure in photos!
Three men with pipes who are all very relaxed.
Stories like this are so interesting to put together and it niggles when the puzzle does not match up. In this case, it seems you are pretty close.Could the two good looking fellows have been twins? I think these photos are in very good condition.
As others have said, what a handsome man! Looks like a poet to me!
John, or not, he was certainly handsome!
I’ll bet that those girls conspired to make sure that John got the garter, and then fought like mad to catch the bouquet. I think I see the one in the black blouse scheming.
Looking forward to the continuing saga in the ensuing weeks.
You may be on to something, Brett!
there is such fabulous detail in those photographs when they are enlarged, and also in your write-up of this fascinating series. I am thoroughly enjoying it.
waiting for another day…
Lovely photographs and good research on your part,
but I dare contradict you here: you are “on theme”,
when you mentioned those letters your mother gave you.
We don’t see them here, but you did say they provided you with additional clues,
so, they are essential to this post.
And those letters were written on paper
that a factory girl trimmed and packed ages ago…
There’s no getting out of it, you are on theme!!!
😉
HUGZ
When you get right down to it, all the photographs were on paper so I guess anything would have been on theme…
I do agree that this could be the same person. He seems to have a lot of hair, combed differently in each picture!
Yes – He does have a good head of hair!
I must have been having a really busy or bad day when I received these great comments….. Can’t believe I did such a poor job of responding. Thanks for all the comments!