Little Helen’s Photo Shoot: Easter 1899

Easter of 1899 wasn’t Helen’s first Easter, but it was the first one for which she understood, in her way, what was going on.

My grandmother, Helen Fredrica Price, was the fourth child and second daughter of Joe Price and Lizzie Leslie. She was born on January 5, 1898, making her three months old when Easter arrived on April 10, 1898.

By the time of her second Easter, on April 16, 1899, she was a precocious child of fifteen months.

So charming was she at that age, and so great was her mother and father’s love and pride, that they decided to have a photographer capture her image, in a series of fanciful poses, at their home in Buffalo, New York. Joe’s work had recently taken the family from Toronto to Buffalo, where they would live for two or three years before moving back to Toronto.

Nine photographs have come down to us from that photo shoot. All nine (plus duplicates of three of them) have long been in the possession of Helen’s granddaughter, my cousin Karen Pokocky, who received them from her mother, Helen’s daughter, Betty McTavish (born Helen Elizabeth Warner).

The First Batch — Four Photos

Four of the photos were mounted together in this golden frame.

You can enlarge this photo, and any other photo in this post, by clicking on it.

When I took the frame apart, it revealed that someone had written on the back of two of the pictures that had been printed together and then later cut apart before being mounted in the frame.

Here’s what it says (if I’ve transcribed the cursive correctly):

Helen Fredr. Price
one years and 3 months
Easter 1899
Dempsey & Dunn

My guess was that Dempsey and Dunn were the photographers, but there are none by that name in the Buffalo city directory for 1899. Another mystery!

Here are the four photographs (once again, you can click to enlarge them):

The Next Batch — Two More Photos

Two more photographs, taken outside the family home, depict Helen with her Easter chicken. We can tell that these were taken at the same time as the others because, although she’s now wearing a coat suitable for early April in Buffalo, Helen is wearing the same Easter bonnet, tied on in the same way with the same plaid scarf.

And, although the mat on which the second picture is mounted says “Bogurt’s Studio 748 Yonge St. Toronto,” it was only the mounting that was done in Toronto. We know that the photo was taken in Buffalo by looking at the concrete blocks in the background.

Here’s how.

From an entry in the Buffalo city directory, we know that the Price family was living at 865 Seventh Avenue in Buffalo, a few hundred metres from where the entrance to the Peace Bridge now stands. The street has been renamed “Columbus Parkway” and, in April 2017, I went to find and photograph my great grandparents’ house at 865 Columbus Parkway. It was 118 years, almost to the day, after Helen’s photo shoot.

It was a sad disappointment. Unlike the rest of the houses on the street, number 865 was dilapidated. The porch was filled with junk and the yard was strewn with trash.

If you zoom in on the lower left, you’ll see those same distinctive concrete blocks, overhung by the base of the porch, that formed the background in Helen’s chicken picture.

The Final Batch — Three More Photos

The final source for some of Helen’s Easter 1899 pictures came from this set. You’ll definitely want to click to enlarge this one.

Someone mounted seven photographs on a strip of heavy cardboard, but four of them (from the left, the second, third, sixth, and seventh) are duplicates of photos we’ve already seen in the other batches.

Here are the three photos we haven’t seen:

The second of these photos shows Helen, once again, with a chicken, but this time it’s plucked and ready to cook for Easter dinner.

I wonder if it’s the same chicken.