Pretty as a Picture

"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder."

And so is grace, charm, and elegance.

We can behold all that and more
in this photograph of a string quartet of young women
posed with their two guitars and two mandolins.

It is a superb cabinet card photo
with a satin gloss finish on the print
which is mounted on ivory cardstock with scalloped edges.
Only a hint of wear and a minor bend crack
detract from its exquisite quailty.
 

The photographer was
Gaites of 221 N. Randolph St., Macomb, Illinois.

The embossed logo includes
an intertwined monogram of  WHG,
though as I've discovered, the initials
are not necessarily those of the photographer.

The artful arrangement of these four lovely women
shows great skill by the photographer.

A gently directed sidelight illuminates the backdrop
giving an angelic glow to their beautiful white gowns.
Instruments, hands, shoulders, faces
have been carefully positioned for the camera lens.

It's as if their concert is about to begin.

On the back of the photo
is a date written in ink.

Winter 1895

And four names
below it in pencil.

Bertie Keeper
Georgia  Gumbart
Maria Bartleson
Sarah Tunnicliff

The year 1895 neatly matches the women's fashions and hairstyles, as well as the decorative embellishments of the cabinet card photo.

_ _ _

The city of Macomb is in western Illinois, about 77 miles south of Davenport, Iowa and about halfway between Peoria and the Mississippi River. Macomb is the county seat of McDonough County, and in 1895 its population was approaching the 1900 census count of 5,375 residents. Today its inhabitants number about 21,516.

The photographer's address, 221 N. Randolph St., is along one side of Macomb's city center park, which has a typical small town bandstand and Civil War monument with a statue of a Union army soldier. Yet despite being a small community, it contained the usual hierarchy of American social classes for this decade, and these four women represent the genteel refinement of Macomb's high society in 1895.


The date in ink looks contemporary to the photo. Perhaps it was a memento given to a friend or relation. However the names appear more like a later addition. In 1895 a pencil was too crude a writing tool for this kind of annotation, so I think the names were added years later. I presume the name order from top to bottom follows the women's order in the photo left to right. The first name happens to have a simple spelling error typical of someone writing from memory decades after a picture was taken.

The first guitarist's name was Bertie Keefer, not Keeper. She was born in July 1873 the daughter of John M. Keefer, the proprietor of a Macomb drugstore. It's not recorded if "Bertie" was short for Bertha or Alberta, but she and her older sister Wissie, were children from their father's first marriage. In February 1879 John M. Keefer married Lucy A. Beard of Wacomb. In the 1880 census, Wissie and Bertie are each listed as Step Gran Child as the Keefers were living in the home of Mrs. Keefer's mother, Lucy J. Beard. Eventually Bertie and Wissie gained a step-sister named Ruth.

Mr. Beard's drugstore was started by his older brother who opened it in 1861, their father having been a druggist too in Maryland. After returning to Macomb following 3 years military service in the war as a hospital steward, John M. Keefer took over the business in July 1879 on the death of his brother. Keefer, born in Maryland, considered himself a Democrat, though it was said, without political ambition. He was a Royal Arch Mason, and a member of the Knights of Pythias. Keefer held stock in the local building and loan association, sat on the board of the Macomb Tile and Sewer Pipe company, and was regarded as one of Macomb's prominent and most successful businessmen.

Assuming that "Winter 1895" is January-March rather than December, in this photo Bertie is age 21. Given her dark beauty and her father's good fortune, the way the ring on her right hand is displayed is probably not accidental. By June of 1895, she became Mrs. Harry H. Gardner. Her husband's occupation? Druggist.

The second guitarist's name was Georgiana Gumbart. The only daughter of George C. Gumbart and Esther Feilbach Gumbart, Georgia was born in 1871. She and her two older and one younger brothers were born in Illinois but their father was born in Frankfurt, Germany in 1826. However in the U.S. census Gumbert's birthplace was recorded as Bavaria, even though Frankfurt is actually in the German state of Hesse.

George, or probably Georg, Gumbart, as a young man studied civil engineering and did five years service in the German Army before emigrating in 1853 to New York. After some time there he moved to St. Louis in 1859 where he worked as an editor of a German-American newspaper. When the Civil War started his previous military experience won him an appointment as a lieutenant in a Union artillery battery. His unit fought campaigns in Missouri and Kentucky, where he was twice wounded, and then Tennessee and Mississippi, where in the summer of 1863 his disabilities forced him to resign his Captain's commission. He then moved to Macomb to manage a restaurant. By 1880 he had moved into the insurance business, and won election as mayor of Macomb. Like many loyal Union soldiers, he was a Republican, yet curiously he also favored women's suffrage.

Georgia Gumbart was 24 years old on the occasion of this photo. Three years later in March 1898 she married Willis J. Sanborn, a Baptist clergyman.

The mandolinist with her head turned coyly in 3/4 profile is Maria S. Bartleson.  She was the next to youngest of six children, four sons and two daughters, of Gannette and Horatio R. Bartleson. For some reason Mr. Bartleson's wife was not  included in the 1880 census, so with six children he employed a live-in housekeeper while he managed his business as a lumber dealer in Macomb. At various times he also worked in Macomb's city government serving as a school inspector and clerk. In 1900, after most of his children, save the youngest daughter, had left home, Horatio was employed as a railway station and telegraph agent in Macomb.

In 1895 Maria Bartleson was 21, and like the other two women, soon found a partner, marrying Ben B. Hampton in February 1898. At the time, Hampton operated two small newspapers in western Illinois, but by the 1900s he was in New York City publishing his own magazine. Around the time of WW1, Marie and Benjamin B. Hampton moved to Los Angeles where Ben became a minor Hollywood film producer, mostly of westerns.

The second mandolin player was Sarah B. Tunnicliff, whose birth year was 1872. Her father was Damon G. Tunnicliff and her mother shared the same name of Sarah. Mrs. Tunnicliff was Damon's second wife, his first wife having died in 1865 leaving him with five children, and Sarah was the middle child of three more daughters from this second marriage. It was a big household which in the 1880 census included a brother, a brother-in-law, and two servants too. Mr. Tunnicliff was able to support this extended family as he was Macomb's most respected attorney of law. Born in New York in 1829, Damon migrated to Illinois in 1849 and read law in Chicago. After moving to Macomb in 1854 he joined a partnership with another attorney which eventually evolved into his own practice specializing in general law and collections. In 1885 he received an appointment as an Associate Judge of the Illinois Supreme Court but was replaced a few years later when the Illinois statehouse changed political parties. On resuming private practice his son George D. Tunnicliff joined the law firm.

Sarah B. Tunnicliff was age 22 when her quartet photo was taken. Surprisingly she did not marry like her three friends did, and instead pursued an occupation as a teacher. In 1899 she decided to travel abroad to further her education and applied for a U. S. passport. It doesn't include her photo, but it does have a description.

Sworn to before me this 9th day
of December, 1899
Sarah B. Tunnicliff

Description of Applicant

Age, 27 years
Stature, 5 feet, 5 inches, Eng.
Forehead,   high
Eyes,   gray
Nose,   grecian
Mouth,   medium
Chin,   round
Hair,   aub.  brown
Complexion,   fair
Face,   round


I think it's a good match for the woman on the right in the quartet. It certainly doesn't contradict her appearance and supports my idea for the order of names.

_ _ _

Sarah's father died in 1901, and I don't know if she ever used her passport for foreign travel. In the 1910 census at age 37 she is living in Chicago with her mother Sarah H. Tunnicliff, age 64, and her younger sister Ruth, age 34. Only Ruth has an occupation, employed as a doctor at an infectious disease hospital. The sisters remained together through the 1940 census, after their mother passed away in the 1930s. Sarah never listed an occupation and may have been disabled as the census taker in 1940 marked her as U, unable to work.

Georgia Gumbart Sanborn died in Palo Alto, California in 1910 at age 39. Maria Bartleson Hampton, who also moved to California, died in Los Angeles in 1922, age 49. Bertie Keefer Gardner lived until age 82, dying in 1955. And Sarh B. Tunnicliff lived the longest reaching age 85 on her death in 1957.

 * * * *

This story started as an exercise in research, inspired by this beautiful portrait of four musicians. The addition of full names and a date presented perfect clues for sketching out the life story of each woman. After finding the basic information on their families, I was also intrigued at how they represented a fine example of American culture at the end of the 19th century. Unfortunately there are no Macomb newspaper archives on the internet for the years 1894-95, so we can't know the concert occasion when this mandolin guitar quartet played. My first supposition was a high school graduation, but the women are too old for that. As far as I know Macomb did not have college or teachers normal school until after 1900, so my best guess is that they were dressed for a recital presented by their music teacher. Obviously they are dressed for an indoor performance, so that also limits the venues where they might have played. A church? The town's "opera house"? Maybe I'll stumble across the answer someday.

However their hometown, Macomb, was a county seat and fortuitously featured in three editions, 1875, 1885, and 1907 of The History of McDonough County, Illinois, an amazing compendium on the history of the place and the notable persons of Macomb. This kind of local encyclopedia was once very common throughout the United States, and many are now available on Archive.org. They provide a wealth of statistics, history, and biographies that cover the Great Gap between 1880 and 1900 caused by the missing 1890 U.S. Census records.




But as my readers know, I'm never satisfied until I dig a bit deeper into the hidden history of a photo. This week with all the genealogy detail I discovered on Gumbarts, Tunnicliffs, Bartlesons, and Keefers, I forgot my usual research on the photographer, which often is the only clue for photos like this one. I wanted to know how far the Gaites studio was from the women's home addresses, who, not surprisingly, lived very close to each other. In fact it was just a short walk of a few blocks for them.

In the 1910 Macomb census I found Henry W. Gaites, whose initials are on the cabinet card, but his occupation was Confectioner, Own Store. Yet his wife, Laura B. Gaites, was listed as Photographer, Own Gallery. Laura was surely the eye behind the camera that arranged these four women to look their best on this beautiful photograph!

Mr. Gaites sold his candy store July 1904 suffering from poor health and died in 1919. His wife continued with her photo gallery and in 1921 was advertising special prices with a funny story of how she once accepted 12 chickens as payment for a dozen photos. Even with ten cut-price offers, there were Bargains too numerous to mention. Studio open every day from morning until night, including the noon hour.

Macomb IL Daily By-Stander
21 October 1921

In October 1951, newspapers across the country
ran a short filler report with a headline:

St Louis MO Post Dispatch
06 October 1951

Photographer, 90,
Believes She Is
Oldest in Nation

MACOMB, Ill., Oct. 6 (AP) — A spry old lady who believes she is the nation's oldest active photographer will be 90 years old tomorrow.
   Mrs. Laura B. Gaites, who has been a photographer for 69 years, was asked if she planned to retire.
   "Oh, my no!" she snapped.
   She says that during her 69 years as a photographer she has taken an average of 500 pictures of children a year, or a total of 34,500. She also has taken many fiftieth wedding anniversary pictures of couples whose wedding pictures she made.
   She recently photographed a husband and wife on their sixty-third wedding anniversary. She also had taken their wedding picture.
   Mrs. Gaites is in good health. She works with her daughter, Bessie, and her grandson's widow, Mrs. Florence Gaites.

_ _ _

Sadly in March of 1951, Mrs. Laura B. Gaites died in hospital. She was in St. Petersburg, Florida where for some years she and her daughter had regularly spent the winter months. The Tampa Bay Times printed her photograph along with her obituary.

Tampa Bay FL Times
15 March 1952

My photo history story began with an old saying, "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder." For one brief moment in 1895 it was Laura B. Gaites's eye that took the measure of Bertie, Georgia, Maria, and Sarah. She was the artist behind the camera who arranged this string quartet so that we can admire their elegant beauty today.

This is my contribution to Sepia Saturday
where it don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing.