Vanishing Point: The Michiganers

The opening photo today, a nod to this week's Sepia Saturday theme, was taken from the front yard of my father's childhood home in Elm, Michigan, looking across the cow-strewn fields where a freight train smokes away down the Pere Marquette railroad...an example of the "vanishing point" effect.

Not all that far away from Elm was the town of Hudson. And Hudson marks a sort of vanishing point for much of my family tree, where the roots disappear back into a darkish history.

The family album has several photos that don't note the subject's name. However, the backs bear the imprint of two photographers in Hudson, Michigan: Fred D. Brown and D.H. Spencer. Members of both the Hale and, predominantly, the Daniels, clans lived in the Hudson area in the late 1800s. (The longtime American English Hales married into the lately arrived English Danielses, who then married into the Scots/Irish Orrs, who then married into the longtime American English Bentleys.)

George Daniels, my great-great-grandfather, first acquired land in Concord, Michigan, near Battle Creek, in 1848.

 The first photo below I am guessing is a contemporary of George Daniels: Lucretia (Johnson) Hale, who was the mother of George's daughter-in-law Martha (Hale) Daniels. I make this guess based on the fact that it's a tintype (this one has no photographer imprint), and the only other such photos like it in the album are of Martha's daughters Louise and Alice, around 1876.  That was two years after the death of Henry Daniels' mother, Ann Twidale Daniels, the other likely candidate for the photo.

Lucretia would have been about 69 that year. Her husband Hiram Hale (a melodious and oddly common name, as it turns out) had been dead since 1861.

I believe the next photo is the same woman a few years later; her snood or scarf seems identical. She looks about ten years older, so if it's now around 1888, Lucretia would be 80. The young Danielses had moved from Lansing to nearby Hudson, where Henry's parents were now living, in Lenawee County, between 1870 and 1880.

It was a goodly sized family living in Concord as of 1850. The following photos, probably taken 20 years later, are possibly Henry H. Daniels' siblings Mary, b. 1837; Robert, b. 1833 MI; Benjamin, b. 1835; and/or William b. 1846. But no solid evidence exists aside from the photographer's location (Hudson being quite nearby) .

This guy looks to be about the right age to be Robert or Benjamin if this was taken in 1876. On the other hand, he bears a resemblance, especially in the mouth, to Martha Hale Daniels. Like George, she had three brothers and a sister: Andrew (b. 1837),  Benjamin (b. 1835), John (b. 1845), and  Alice (b. 1848) ... Still, everyone looked so "down in the mouth" in these portraits, it's hard to tell!

Sister Alice

This week I manage to fulfil the Sepia Saturday theme of Sisters. Alice E. Daniels, known as Allie, was born in Lansing, Michigan in 1870. She was the younger sister of my great-grandmother Louise, whom I spotlighted in my last Sepia Saturday Eff-Stop post.

 I believe that of these three girls, the far-right one is Allie (there's a telltale birthmark on the bridge of her nose) and the far-left Louise, born in 1868. I have not as yet determined the identity of the older girl. The picture thus would have been taken around 1873, a few years before the family moved a tad south to Lenawee County, Michigan.

Here's Allie with what must be a favorite doll. She has some sort of adornment on her head, unless it's a hairdo of some sort, and appears to be in front of a painted backdrop.

A couple of years later, Allie (left) has a very similar dress -- perhaps the same one but let out -- and a different collar. The backdrop is rather sickeningly tilted! Interestingly, her sister appears in a similar photo wearing the same dress, though without the necklace.

 

Here is what appears to be a teenage Allie -- looking, I have to say, rather wistful, though I think she's the more beautiful of the sisters.

One mystery is that in the 1900 census, there is a Harry Daniels, aged 6, living with his grandparents Henry and Martha Daniels, along with Alice. Alice, now 30 (although being listed as 25), does not have a married name. Harry, noted as a grandson, not a son, is not the son of Louise, who was by this time married to Gaylord Orr, with her own children. He is listed as being born in Arkansas -- a state the Danielses never lived in, as far as I know. Was he born out of wedlock? Did Alice marry, move to Arkansas, and then divorce and return home?

For more about Louise and the Orrs, see The Irish Side.

Louise

This week, after a patient wait of 35 years, I received the family photograph album. Although it did not contain the expected Bentley family pictures, it did contain pictures from my father's mother's side, the Orrs, Daniels, and Hales, in a spectacular collection of Daguerrotypes and other mostly formal portraits. This week I present my great-grandmother Louise.

Louise Daniels, born in 1867 or 1868 in Michigan, was the second child, the first girl, of Capt. Henry H. Daniels, of English descent, and Martha Louise Hale, who was reputedly from the line of the famed Nathan hale. Louise was my great-grandmother on my father's side -- his mother's mother.

A second girl, Alice, called Allie, was born in 1870.

In 1887, when she was just 20, Louise, now living in Colorado with her recent husband, prospector Gaylord A. Orr, gave birth to the first of two children, Jessie Louise Orr.

On the left you see Louise and Jessie. On the right you see Jessie in 1910 with her own firstborn, Dorothy Bentley, my father's elder sister.

Here's Louise with, I believe, her father Henry.

Here's the only photo of Louise I had ever seen prior to this week, with a grandson, shortly before her death in 1956, when I was two years old. We never met.

Be sure to visit Sepia Saturday for more antiquity!