Returning once more to the Nusbaum Album, out of the more than one hundred CDVs in the album, only six had names on them. We saw two in my last post, and this post will discuss the other four that had names on them. Two had the name Gardiner on them:

The one of the man says Hellis & Sons at the bottom; on the reverse it repeats Hellis & Sons and lists all their branches, all in England. The one of the woman was taken by J. Telling Photographers in Bridgend, which is a town in Wales. Ava volunteered that she believed these were taken in the 1880s, the one of the man in the later part of the decade, the one of the woman in the early 1880s. She thought the man appeared to be in his early 20s, meaning he was born sometime in the late 1860s.

Since I had only one Gardiner family on my tree, I was pretty certain who those people might be. Bernard Seligman’s son Arthur, my great-grandmother Eva Seligman’s younger brother, had a son Otis Perry Seligman. Otis married a woman named Doris Gardiner, who was born in Nantymoel, Wales on February 17, 1901. Nantymoel is a village in the county of Bridgend. Doris Gardiner’s parents were George Gardiner, born in about 1864 in Wales, and Mary Ann Wilcox, born in 1866 in Wales.  It certainly appears that these two photographs were of Doris Gardiner’s parents George and Mary Ann.

These photographs appear on a very late page in the album on the reverse side of that page so probably were added after the album was otherwise filled. That makes sense since Doris Gardiner didn’t marry Otis Seligman until July 23, 1921, in Cleveland, Ohio, where Doris and her parents had settled after immigrating to the United States in 1914. Doris may have added these two photographs once she joined the family.

Doris and Otis were the parents of Arthur Seligman II, later known as Arthur “Pete” Scott, my second cousin, once removed. Pete was, as long-time readers may recall, a tremendous help to me when I was researching the Sante Fe branch of the family. His sister Joan Seligman Diamond was the grandmother of my cousin Jhette and a prior owner of the Nusbaum Album.  It certainly makes sense that Doris’ parents George and Mary Ann, grandparents to Pete and Joan, great-great-grandparents of Jhette, would be in this album.

The other two photographs with names on them are not related to me nor, as far as I can tell, anyone else in the family. The first, however, is of a fairly well-known person, Louis Sulzbacher. The back of this photograph has the following words written on it: “Compliments of Louis Sulzbacher, Las Vegas Feb 1878, Mrs. N. Seligman, S.F.”

Louis Sulzbacher

Louis Sulzbach

Louis Sulzbacher was, like Bernard Seligman, a German Jewish immigrant to the United States. The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture includes this information about Sulzbacher:

An attorney and a judge of the United States Court for the Indian Territory, Louis M. Sulzbacher was born on May 10, 1842, in Kirchheimbolanden, Bavaria. Coming to the United States in 1859 as a young adult, he settled in New Mexico Territory, read law, was admitted to the bar, and opened a law office in Las Vegas. He remained in the Land of Enchantment for some two decades. In 1869 he married Paulina Flersheim in Kansas City, Missouri. In 1898, during the Spanish-American War, he served with Theodore Roosevelt’s Rough Riders.

In 1900 Pres. William McKinley appointed Sulzbacher to the newly created Supreme Court in the recently formed Territory of Puerto Rico. He served until his appointment to the [Oklahoma] Indian Territory bench. In 1904 Congress created four additional judgeships for the United States Court for the Indian Territory. Pres. Theodore Roosevelt appointed Sulzbacher as judge for the Western District [of Oklahoma].

He served until his appointment to the Indian Territory bench. Leaving the bench at Oklahoma 1907 statehood, Sulzbacher resided in Kansas City for a few years. He then moved to New York City, where he died in Manhattan on January 17, 1915, and was buried in Kansas City.

I have no idea what the connection was to the Seligman family in Santa Fe. I am not even sure who “Mrs. N. Seligman” could be, living in Santa Fe in 1878. Frances was living there at that time, but her initial would be F, not N, or if she were being referred to by her husband Bernard’s name, as women did back then, it would be B. Maybe it says Mn., not Mrs., but even then—I have no idea who that would be. I am going to assume that the N was a mistake and that Sulzbacher gave his CDV to Frances Nusbaum Seligman. Ah, maybe the N was for Nusbaum!

Finally, the only other photograph in the album that has a name written on it is this one:

The back reads as follows: “I am sorry you are not at home—will be in the city in about ten days when I hope to meet you. Yours, S. B. Axtell.”

The photograph is of a woman taken by Keely’s located at 5^th and Coates Street in Philadelphia. This is the same photographer who Ava found at that location in Philadelphia directories in the 1850s and 1860s. I am in no position to judge the specific date by the clothing, but assuming this photograph was taken in the Civil War era, just who could S.B. Axtell be?

I found only two people with that surname and a first name that started with S—Samuel Axtell and his wife Sarah Leighty Axtell. Although they were married in 1854 in Athens, Ohio, where they thereafter lived,¹ both Samuel and Sarah were Pennsylvania natives.²

Whether or not it was Samuel or Sarah Axtell who stopped by to see someone in Philadelphia, presumably John and Jeanette, is impossible for me to know. It’s the best guess I have.

What this photograph did demonstrate, however, along with the one of Louis Sulzbacher is that there are photographs in the album of people who were not part of either the Nusbaum or the Seligman family. As Ava had been telling me all along, people gave these CDVs to friends and family—as mementos, as gifts, as calling cards.

On that note, my next post will be my final post about the Nusbaum Album, and I will make some attempt to identify the people in some of the remaining photographs or at least to address who in the family could have been living in those locations during the second half of the 19th century. Keeping in mind that (1) they could be friends, not family, and (2) they could be of people visiting that location who don’t necessarily live there, I realize that to some extent this is an exercise in futility. But having gotten this far, why not engage in a bit more speculation?