Family Archive

Cigar Bands

Cigar bands were a novel early 20th century way of promoting something. Here are 2 examples of these I uncovered. 

My Grandfather's sister, my great aunt Juliet, did characterizations and  impersonations on the Vaudeville circuits. During the early part of her career she went by the name Juliet ?. The implication being that nobody in the audience ever really knew if the performer on stage was  her. Post World War I she became known as Miss Juliet. The photo of her on the cigar band is a promotional portrait of her that was taken around 1910.

The lower cigar band is part of a book which is a series of studies for this finished product. My Grandfather was a longtime member and Dean of the Friars Club. This band was given out with the cigars at one of the Friars  many banquets or roasts.

Archive Overview

A few key principals have emerged in my mind, with regard to Family Archives since my project (archive, book, blog) began. As I ponder these principals myself and discuss them with friends they  continue to be illuminated and reinforced. Here are the ones I think about on a daily basis that might lead people, as they did for me, toward the desire to know more about their family identities, where they came from, and how this information can be useful. In short, looking at and understanding your past in order to see further and clearer in your future.

* We all have interesting family stories buried somewhere in our past.

How do we find them? Where do we look? What if they were destroyed? In the past few weeks I've heard some incredible family stories from friends. Each story is unique and was passed down very differently.

* People's lives are finite but stories and properly cared for information can endure.

I never had the opportunity to meet my father's parents. My mother told me (I later confirmed from his obituary) that my Grandfather died a few days before my parents found out that I'd been conceived. The archive I recently discovered gave me the next best thing to meeting him. If possible take the time to sit down and talk to family members while you've got the chance. Many people regret it when they don't. Take notes.

* It takes an appropriate combination of time and life experience, different for everybody, for the significance of what you can learn from a family archive to resonate.

None of this really mattered much at all to me until I had my own family which provided a context for me to understand my own mortality. A few years earlier I could have tripped and fallen over a box of this type of materials and never given it a second look.

* Opening that box takes courage and commitment.

Not everything you discover is going to be pleasing to you. How can unpleasant or sad information enhance the experience? How can you justify the unpleasant things you might learn?

* Whenever possible do your own detective work.

Stories and hearsay can be subjective. To get to the real core examine and read whatever archival materials you can find for yourself. Once you've done that then you have the benefit of being able to draw your own conclusions from what you hear when you talk to family members. Also remember, the details can be as interesting as the big picture. Why was this item stored here? Who is this person I've never seen before? Where was this photo taken?

* Trust your instincts when you are talking to relatives or working with a Family Archive. They didn't become your instincts by accident.

Cabinet Cards

The photograph above was taken in 1894 and is of my Grandfather (my father's father) at 2 years old and his older sister Juliet, who was 5 years old. The photograph was taken at the Schmidt studio, which was located at 201 1/2 East 89st near 3rd Ave NY.

Some of the oldest items I discovered in my personal treasure are photographic portraits taken by professionals and mounted on thick paper stock which were referred to in the trade as cabinet cards. Cabinet cards became popular shortly after The Civil War around the mid-1860's and were used until the late 1890 when they were mostly replaced by the snapshot and the emergence of personal photography. The cards were usually decorated with the logo, signature and address of the photographer and his studio; they functioned as both a way of showcasing the photographer's work and as his makeshift business card. By simply googling the name and address of various studios seen on  these cards I was able to learn all sorts of personal and professional information about the photographers of this era. These searches also gave me the opportunity to see other portraits and works that were taken by the same photographer as the items I found. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabinet_card

Noted on Back.

The more time I spent examining the contents of the boxes I'd found the more interesting and exciting the story unfurling in front of me became. Each item was unique and carried with it an array of individualized details that acted as clues to understanding the broader narrative of my family. Some photographs had hand written notes right on them. Often the notes were as enlightening as the photos they accompanied. I was struck by what a rare and unorthodox opportunity I'd stumbled onto to learn about members of my immediate family I'd never had the chance to meet when they were alive. I felt compelled to know more and began to gather information about the period when these materials were created using both the library and the Internet. I also started asking questions and tapping into the people who had known my grandparents and great grandparents first hand. The obvious place to begin was with my father, who started by telling me about all of the other cartons of my grandparent's belongings he'd stashed away throughout the apartment.

The puzzle.

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There are several different aspects to the discovery I made at the top of the closet all of which have been valuable and illuminating. Here is a little more background.

Both of my father's parents, my Grandparents (see picture above), were in Show Business as was his father's sister who was my great aunt. This is a big part of the reason for the amount of the material that was saved and why there was often a camera around.

Other than my father's sister, who incidentally is also the baby in the pram in the photograph from my first post "old things", I never had the opportunity to meet any of my father's immediate relatives who had all died before I was born.

The spot that my relatives are standing in that same photograph is only a few blocks away from where several of them lived, the apartment where I grew up and my parents still live, the apartment I live now, and the apartment where my one sister, Juliet, lives now.

I've spent the last year writing a book about all my findings and what I learned from them. I'm hoping to use my blog to make people more aware of what might be hidden within their own stuff. A few years ago I barely knew a thing about my past or my family lineage and wasn't really that interested. The last few years I've become fascinated and fully engaged in putting together the pieces to this enormous yet intricate puzzle.