Having now discussed many of the photographs that were unlabeled in the Nusbaum Album, I am going to turn to the few photographs that were labeled, making the task of identification much easier. There were only a handful that had names on them or other clues as to who was depicted in the photograph, and two of those appear on the very last page of the album and are of two babies who died as children.

First, there is this photograph with the following inscription under the baby’s picture: “Yours Truly Milton Josephs.” The reverse of that photograph shows that this was taken by George H. Rau Photographers of 922 Girard Avenue in Philadelphia.

Milton Josephs

Milton Josephs was born in Philadelphia on December 28, 1878, to Gustavus Josephs and Miriam Nusbaum. Miriam was the daughter of John and Jeanette Nusbaum and a sister of Frances Nusbaum, so she was my three-times-great-aunt. Her son Milton was John and Jeanette’s grandson and Frances’ nephew. Little Milton died before his second birthday on November 17, 1880. Given that he looks about three or four months old in this photograph, I assume it was taken in early 1879.

Right next to the photograph of little Milton in the Nusbaum Album is this photograph. It has the following inscription on its reverse side: “Compliments of STN [?] Dinkelspiel. Eva H. Dinkelspiel. 6 mo 19 days old weighs 23 lbs. How’s that for high[?]?“ The photograph was taken by Thurlow & Smith Photographers of 107 Main Cor. Jefferson, Peoria, Illinois.

Eva Helen Dinkelspiel

Eva Helen Dinkelspiel was the daughter of Adolph Dinkelspiel and Nancy Lyon; her paternal grandmother was Mathilda Nusbaum Dinkelspiel, John Nusbaum’s sister. Eva thus was John’s great-niece. Adolph Dinkelspiel was John’s nephew and a first cousin to Frances Nusbaum.  Eva was born on January 25, 1872, in Peoria, Illinois. That means this photograph, taken when she was six months old and nineteen days old, was taken on July 13, 1872,  seven years before the photograph of Milton Josephs, yet they are placed together in the Nusbaum album. Eva, like Milton, died as a child. She was seven years old when she died from scarlet fever on November 28, 1879, in Peoria.

It obviously was not an accident that these two photographs were placed next to each other in the album. They were not taken at the same time or at the same place and although they are both of Nusbaum family members, they were not from the same nuclear family. They had to be placed here because they were both of children who died young. And they died just about a year apart in time.

What makes the placement of the photograph of Eva Dinkelspiel also surprising is that the other seven photographs taken in Peoria appear in the album much earlier—at about the midpoint of the album. Here are those two pages:

The woman on the lower right of the first of those pages was photographed in Harrisburg, but the other seven—six men and one woman—were photographed in Peoria, by various photographers.   As I was surprised to learn when I first was researching my Nusbaum family, many of them ended up in Peoria. You can read about Peoria and why, when, and how my Nusbaum relatives ended up living there here on my blog. 

John Nusbaum, as noted in that blog post, opened a store in Peoria and is listed in the Peoria directories, but it was his three sons who ran that store during the 1860s and 1870s and who lived in Peoria: Adolphus, Simon and Julius Nusbaum. We’ve already seen that John’s nephew Adolph Dinkelspiel, father of the ill-fated Eva mentioned above, also lived in Peoria during those decades, as did his sister Paulina Dinkelspiel Simon, John’s niece.

Although I do not have Ava’s expertise about individual photographers, I did find most of the photographers who took the photographs of these seven people in Peoria listed in Peoria directories in the 1860s and 1870s; two of those photographers also included on their CDV insignias the words “over Philadelphia store.” The “Philadelphia store” must have referred to John Nusbaum’s store in Peoria, which was located at Main and Adams, the same location as those two photographers. It seems obvious that the Nusbaum brothers knew these photographers and vice versa.

I believe that the seven people in these photographs are probably Nusbaum relatives. These three seem to resemble each other the most.

They also seem to look a bit like the man in the photos who might be John Nusbaum.

I am willing to speculate that they were John and Jeanette’s sons, Frances’ brothers, Adolphus, Simon, and Julius. That thought, however speculative it may be, makes me happy.