One wonders what struck the young minds of the Chapman girls pictured here, Tracy on left and Terri on right, in matching attire. They both seem to take in a distant happening beyond the frame to the right. Mildly amused, not bewildered or fearful.

For dating, I will presume late fall from the barren trees and wilted leaves on the ground, though as usual, post-thaw spring could also agree — as there is a bit of an Easter Sunday vibe going on too. I settled on Nov of 1968, the girls being a young 5 years and 3 years, respectively, as an estimate here.

The location is intriguing, if anyone can recognize the houses/structures, as I imagine there’s enough here to confirm by google maps if I get a lead.

The occasion for now is elusive to me beyond guesswork.

Addendum:

Thanks to Terri’s input, she’s helped establish this as Easter (she thinks 1969 — April 6, 1969, the girls being 3.5 and 5.5 years old), and location as 202 Medina St — I found this pic of the property on Redfin and you can see the same curved stone pathway that they are likely standing on in the picture:

Infobox

So as an aside, here’s an interesting (to perhaps me only), article about how there is a group working to help improve the way we attach information to digital photos as it relates to family history. They are basically trying to solve this problem:

In the era of born-digital media – content captured on phones, cameras and other devices – basic information about the time, date, location, and device is recorded but rarely does information about the scene or the people depicted make its way into that file. Worse still, when that file is uploaded to a digital platform, it is all too often stripped away of its metadata. When descriptions, dates, and tags are added on most commercial platforms, that information is saved to the platform operators database and not to the media itself. When files are downloaded are moved between platforms, the data does not travel with the files, resulting in the loss of the owner’s hard work and critical historical information.

So essentially the hope is that the attachment of information describing the photo (that’s what metadata is — essentially the describers, like date, people, context, location, keywords, captions), could become universal/standardized/portable. I love it.

I’ve also been following the guru of this type of work, Maureen Taylor, “the photo detective”. Her multiple books are informative and helpful as she expertly blends genealogy with photo investigative work. I enjoy a project she did where she tried to track down 1800’s-era photographs of individuals who were alive during the American Revolution and survived/were old enough to be photographed when the technology emerged. She has a podcast as well.

Along similar lines of the Revolution project she’s doing, and in other historical Lodi news (or rabbit holes to fall through), I found a seller on ebay selling interesting cabinet card photos of an elderly man who lived in Lodi, Ohio in his later years and thought they’d be a cool share.

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Looks like there was a write-up about him in Harper’s Weekly in 1875, as they thought he was the oldest man in the country at the time:

HOWEVER, looks like researchers ultimately found out his age was overstated — somewhat — I mean the man still made it to 106, which was no easy task circa late 1800’s (or now).

Here’s his gravesite in Lodi.

And a write-up with more about him.

Another cool detail here, is that the photos of him were taken by WH Cunningham, who was the main photographer in Lodi, and perhaps is the location for some of the studio-based shots I have. This was a helpful article about him, and even specified the location of his old studio as 201/203 Medina St, taken up by 2 homes modern day (right across from where Mill St ends at Medina St). Tantalizingly, she indicates they have a lot of unclaimed/unidentified photos from his studio that are at the historical society museum.

Questions

• Where is this photo taken? There’s enough structures around that it could be confirmable with google maps.
• Any recollection of occasion/situation?