Category Archives: Nusbaum

What I Learned From My Great-Great-Grandmother’s Will

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I am back from a break after a great visit with our kids and then a week to recover! Before I return to the story of the family of Malchen Rothschild (as I am still waiting to speak with her great-grandson Julio), I have an update about how I discovered my great-great-grandmother’s will.

Earlier this summer Teresa of Writing My Past wrote about full-text searching on FamilySearch. I had never known about this tool but was tempted to see what I could find. I followed the link that Teresa provided on her blog and entered “John Nusbaum Cohen” to see what would come up.

Lo and behold, it immediately retrieved what turned out to be the last will and testament of my great-great-grandmother Frances Nusbaum Seligman. Frances was the daughter of John Nusbaum, my three-times great-grandfather, and the wife of Bernard Seligman, my great-great-grandfather—-two of my pioneer ancestors who came to the US as young men from Germany in the mid-19th century. Both John Nusbaum and Bernard Seligman became successful merchants, John in Philadelphia and Bernard in Santa Fe. But neither came here as a wealthy man.

So I was amazed when I read this will to see just how much property—-jewelry, cash, and other property—Frances owned at the time of her death in Philadelphia on July 27, 1905. She was only 59 when she died, and she left behind three surviving children (two had died before adulthood): my great-grandmother Eva Seligman Cohen and her brothers James Seligman and Arthur Seligman. In addition, Frances had siblings and grandchildren, all of whom are named in her will, as well as other family members and friends.

There  were two inventories of Frances’ property. The bulk of her property was inventoried in September 1905 and included stock, cash, jewelry, and other personal items.1

The total value of these properties came to $17,180.43, or approximately $617,000 in today’s dollars. Of course, many of these items, especially the jewelry, may have appreciated far beyond the value they had in 1905 and beyond what the inflation calculators consider.

The second inventory was of Frances’ kitchenware and dishware:

 

The value of these goods was appraised in 1906 as $247.55. In today’s dollars that would be approximately $9000.

The documents do not include any appraisal of any real estate although, as we will see, Frances owned some real estate in Santa Fe.

Frances’ will detailed with great specificity where all this personal and other property was to go. Her original will is eight typed pages plus there is a one page handwritten codicil. I loved reading this will because it names so many of the relatives I’ve written about on my blog. It was fascinating to see how inclusive Frances was in deciding who would get portions of her estate. The following images are the pages from the will with my comments about some or all of the provisions on that page.

In the Third Clause below, Frances divided $1250 among her four siblings. But Simon, Julius, and Miriam each got $250 whereas Lottie received $500. Did she love Lottie more than the others? Or did Lottie have greater need? Lottie never married, so unlike Miriam who had a husband to support her and Simon and Julius who were men, Lottie may in fact have had greater need.

There is a similar seemingly favorable bias in terms of Frances’ distribution to her three living children, Eva, James, and Arthur. Eva was to receive all of her mother’s linen and wearing apparel. Well, I guess the sons couldn’t wear her clothes. But then in the Fifth Clause above, Frances bequeathed a whole lot of jewelry to Eva: “my diamond bracelet, my diamond star with chain attached thereto, my watch studded with diamonds, one of the large diamonds from my thirteen stone diamond ring, my set of silver containing one dozen knives, one dozen large spoons, one dozen small spoons, one large soup ladle and one dozen silver forks.”

What did James get? “One diamond from my thirteen stone diamond ring and a silver coffee pot.” And Arthur: “the other large diamond from my thirteen stone diamond ring, and a silver coffee pot.”

Wow, did they get shafted or what! Even Emanuel Cohen, my great-grandfather and Eva’s husband, got “the centre diamond in my diamond cluster pin.” And he was married to Eva, who was already getting all those diamonds!

Frances then gave other jewelry items to her daughters-in-law and to her grandchildren. My grandfather John Nusbaum Cohen got “four stones from my diamond cluster pin.”

The will goes on to identify specific pieces of jewelry for other family members—aunts, uncles, nephews, nieces, brothers-in-law, and even August Seligman, the younger brother of Bernard Seligman, a brother who never left Germany. Did August get the “silver knife, fork and spoon marked S.S.”? Perhaps his great-grandson Wolfgang knows. I will have to ask him.

And then at the end of that Fifth Clause below, the will provides, “All the remainder of my jewelry, not otherwise disposed of by this will, it is my desire that my daughter, Eva May Cohen, distribute as she may see proper.”

Before I go on, I need to point out that I do not have one piece of jewelry or anything else that once belonged to Frances Nusbaum Seligman, my great-great-grandmother. Not one thing. Even though all those diamonds were bequeathed to my great-grandmother Eva Seligman Cohen, I have no idea where they went once Eva died. She raised my father and his sister from the time they were quite young when both their parents were hospitalized, yet my father did not have one thing—-not one spoon or even a coffee pot—-that had belonged to his beloved grandmother. I have no idea where it all went. Perhaps it was sold during the Depression. Perhaps the other three grandchildren of Eva Seligman Cohen received it, but that seems unlikely. In any event, it’s gone.

Having cleared the air on that, I am now looking at the Sixth Clause (see above). It provides in part for a $3000 trust for Frances’ mother Jeanette Dreyfus Nusbaum, my three-times great-grandmother, who was still living when Frances drew up this will in 1905. I love that Frances provided for her mother and even specified that she receive ten dollars on her birthday (May 20) and five dollars at the Jewish New Year in addition to the ten dollar regular monthly payments under this provision. It shows me how caring Frances was and also how much being Jewish was still an important part of the family’s life. Jeanette was 87 when the will was executed, and she outlived her daughter Frances, dying on January 12, 1908, at the age of 90.

There are then several bequests to various charitable organizations, and then we come to the Eleventh Clause (below), in which Frances requires that a trust be created from fifty shares of her stock in Seligman Brothers in Santa Fe, the dividends from which were to be paid to “my daughter Eva May Cohen, for and during her natural life, for her sole and separate use, not to be in any way or manner whatever liable to the contracts, debts, or engagements of her husband.” I am so impressed that Frances had the wisdom to set aside money that would be only for her daughter and not under the control of Eva’s husband. How progressive is that!

The provision further provides that Eva’s children would inherit that stock upon her death as well as Eva’s brothers James and Arthur. Sadly, Seligman Brothers itself did not survive long enough to benefit those beneficiaries as it closed for business by 1930.

Nevertheless, once again Frances favored Eva in the will.

The Twelfth Clause refers to a house and lot in Santa Fe to be shared by all three of Frances’ children. (I don’t see that property included in the inventories mentioned above so the estate was worth more than estimated above.) In 1904 when Frances executed this will that was the location of the oldest hotel in Santa Fe, the Exchange Hotel. I have no idea what it was worth at that time, but it certainly added something substantial to the overall value of Frances Nusbaum Seligman’s estate.

Below are the final provisions in the original will.

There is also a handwritten codicil to the will dated February 18, 1905. It includes additional specific bequests of various items of personal property and also provides that $200 was to be given to Congregation Keneseth Israel for the purpose of “placing the names of my husband Bernard Seligman and my own, together with the dates of our respective deaths, upon the memorial tablet on the North-East Wall of the Synagogue.” We all want to be remembered, don’t we?

I wrote to Congregation Keneseth Israel, now located in the suburbs of Philadelphia, asking about my great-great-grandparents’ plaque, and I was quite moved and relieved to learn that it still exists on their memorial wall in their suburban location. Their executive director Brian Rissinger kindly sent me this image of the plaques:

Finding this will was such a gift. It gave me insights into my great-great-grandmother Frances Nusbaum and her relationships with her children, grandchildren, siblings, and others. And it reminded me how extraordinary her life was—-growing up as the daughter of a successful merchant in Philadelphia only to fall in love with a young immigrant from Germany who had lived in Santa Fe. After marrying him and having four children in Philadelphia, she moved with him and their children to Santa Fe, living in what was then a small but growing pioneer town with very few Jews and even fewer Jewish women. And her will demonstrated that she cared deeply about her Jewish identity. She must have been so resilient and so devoted to make that adjustment to life in Santa Fe. I wrote about Frances and Bernard in my family history novel, Santa Fe Love Song for anyone who wants to know more about them..

Frances was described in her obituary in these terms:

“She was a beautiful and accomplished woman, as good as she was beautiful and as beautiful as she was good, and of a most lovable and gentle disposition. She was an exemplary wife, a fond and good mother, and a dutiful and loving daughter. Indeed she was all that is implied in the phrase ‘a thoroughly good and moral woman.’ … She will be especially remembered by the poor people of [Santa Fe], to whom she was particularly kind. Many and many truly charitable deeds have been put to her credit.”

Everything in her will reflected those same qualities.

I was deeply touched by the relationship between Frances and her daughter Eva, my great-grandmother. Frances had lost two daughters; her daughter Florence had died when she was just a month old, and her daughter Minnie had died when she was seventeen. Thus, Eva, her first born child, was her only surviving daughter, and that must have made Frances cherish her even more.

That Eva was deeply loved by her mother also sheds light on the woman she became. In learning about Eva from my father and from my research, I grew to appreciate what a strong and compassionate woman she was. Like her mother Frances, she lost one son as a baby and a second son predeceased her by committing suicide. Like her mother, Eva was uprooted from Philadelphia to Santa Fe, but returned to Philadelphia for college and lived the rest of her life there after marrying my great-grandfather Emanuel Cohen. Being so far from her parents and brothers back in Santa Fe must have been as difficult for her as it had been for her mother to leave her family behind in Philadelphia to move to Santa Fe.

Despite all those losses and difficulties, Eva clearly had a big heart. She took a widowed brother-in-law and his son into her home for many years, she took her parents into her home when they returned to Philadelphia to retire, and, most importantly to me, she took my father and aunt into her home and provided them with comfort, love, and security when their parents were unable to care for them.

The love between Frances and Eva, between mother and daughter, shines through in this will. And I am so grateful to Teresa for alerting me to the full-text search on FamilySearch so that I could find it.

 

 

 

 

  1. All the documents included in this post were located using the full-text search on FamilySearch. They are cited there as follows: Philadelphia, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States records,” images,
    FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:S3HT-D4WP-CQ?
    view=fullText : Aug 30, 2025), images 189-206 of 315. ↩

The John Nusbaum Album: Some Final Thoughts

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So what is left to talk about regarding the Nusbaum album, you may wonder? Well, Ava Cohn aka Sherlock Cohn analyzed about a quarter of the photographs taken in Philadelphia, all of the Santa Fe photographs, and about a third of the photographs from Germany. Add to that the handful I discussed that had names on them plus the photographs from Peoria, and that means many but not all of the photographs in the album have been discussed or analyzed. What can I say about those others?

There are some that are more like postcards of famous places or people, e.g., a photograph of a painting of Goethe and one of “Baby Benson,” a child performer popular in the 1870s. But otherwise all the other photographs—at least another forty—are of people who have not been identified.

Goethe

I gave up on the ones from Philadelphia—too many possibilities! An infinite number now that I know that these CDVs could have been given to the Nusbaums by friends, acquaintances, even visitors from other states, as we saw with S.B. Axtell’s CDV left as a calling card. I posted on a Philadelphia genealogy group on Facebook, inviting people to send me photos of their ancestors that I would use to compare with mine, but I had no luck.

But I thought I could at least make an educated guess about the four photographs of children that were taken in Lewistown, Pennsylvania, all taken by a photographer named J.M. Wimer.

I have only one family on my family tree that lived in Lewistown in the mid-1800s—the family of Mathilde Dreyfuss Nusbaum Pollock. Mathilde Dreyfuss was the sister of my three-times great-grandmother Jeanette Dreyfuss Nusbaum. I at first thought it would be obvious who was who in these photos. As if…

Mathilde was married first to John Nusbaum’s younger brother Meier or Maxwell. They had two children together, Flora in 1848 and Albert in 1851. Tragically, Maxwell was killed in the San Francisco fire of 1851 while traveling there for business. Mathilde married Moses Pollock a few years later and had three children with him: Emanuel (1856), Miriam (1858), and Rosia (1870).

By 1860 Mathilde and her family were living in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and by 1870 they were living in Philadelphia. CDVs were first seen in the US in about 1859-1860. Assuming the photographs were taken before Mathilde moved to Harrisburg and thus before 1860, that would mean these photos were taken no earlier than 1859 and no later than 1860, if they are of Mathilde’s children while living in Lewistown. In 1859 Albert Nusbaum would have been eight, Emanuel Pollock would have been three, and Miriam Pollock would have been a year old. Rosia wasn’t yet born, and Flora would have been eleven, but I don’t see an eleven year old girl here. So I thought maybe the older boy was Albert, the baby was Miriam, and one of the others was Emanuel.

But then I remembered that Ava had said that the fringed chairs were not introduced until 1864.

Also, it appears that in the 1850s until sometime after 1870, J.M. Wimer (sometimes spelled Weimer) was living in Mifflintown, Pennsylvania, which is about thirteen miles from Lewistown. He doesn’t show up in Lewistown until the 1880 US census. Newspaper articles from 1871 show him as a resident of Mifflintown. Now thirteen miles doesn’t sound that far in today’s world, but in the horse and buggy era that might take three hours, not exactly a convenient commute.

So perhaps these photos were taken in the 1870s or 1880s. If so, I had no relatives living in Lewistown at that time. And thus, once again, I can’t be certain who these children are.

As for the remaining photographs in the album not taken in Pennsylvania, Santa Fe, or Germany, there are about twelve photographs in the album that were taken in New York City. I have no idea who could be in these photographs. As far as I can tell, assuming that these photographs were also taken some time between 1860 and 1890 like all the others in the album, there were no Nusbaum or Seligman relatives living in New York City during those years. Could they have visited and had photographs taken? Of course. Could these be friends of the family? Certainly. But unless someone comes up with a photograph to match these people, it’s like looking for a needle in a haystack to try and identify them. Or even more impossible.

Then there are the CDVs from places where I cannot find any likely family connections, like Montgomery, Alabama, St. Louis, Missouri, and Wheeling, West Virginia. Sadly, I have no way of knowing who these people could be. They, like so many of the others in the album, will remain a mystery.

And thus, I come to the end of this chapter in my genealogy journey. Out of over one hundred photographs, I have a positive identification of Moritz Seligmann, my three-times great-grandfather, and a probable identification of Babette Schoenfeld Seligmann, his wife, my three-times great-grandmother, based on earlier photographs. I have positive identification of two babies who died as children (Milton Josephs and Eva Dinkelspiel) because their names are on the photographs. Same for two people who were distantly related to me by marriage, the Gardiners, the parents of Doris Gardiner who married Otis Seligman. And also I can identify some people who were not related to me at all—Louis Sulzbacher, Goethe, Baby Benson, and some mysterious visitor named S.B. Axtell.

Beyond that, I have some possible identifications—maybe there’s a photograph or two of John Nusbaum, maybe some of his sons in Peoria, maybe a photograph of Frances Nusbaum, maybe one or two of her sister Miriam—but nothing nearly definite enough to label them as such.

Nevertheless, this has been an exciting and worthwhile adventure. I’ve learned a great deal about CDVs, the dating of photographs, and the names of some Philadelphia, Santa Fe, and German photographers and when and where they worked. I’ve had the great pleasure of collaborating with Ava Cohn in trying to identify the people in the photographs.

I’ve also gained some insights into the lives of my Nusbaum-Seligman relatives from the overall collection of CDVs. They knew many people from many different places, and the photographs appear to be of people who were if not wealthy, certainly not poor. They are well dressed and distinguished looking. Someone was a fan of Goethe, someone was a fan of Baby Benson. And reviewing the album reminded me of one of the tragic realities of life in those times—many children did not live to adulthood, like Milton Josephs and Eva Dinkelspiel. Even if I can’t put names to most of the faces, I have had a glimpse into the lives of my ancestors.

And I have had my hands on a physical object that I know for certain was handled by my three-times great-grandparents John Nusbaum and Jeanette Dreyfuss, by their daughter Frances, my great-great-grandmother, and by her husband Bernard Seligman, and most likely also by my great-grandmother Eva Seligman Cohen and her siblings. Before it ended up in the hands of an antique dealer in Santa Fe, it was in the possession of Eva’s niece and Arthur Seligman’s daughter Joan, Joan’s daughter Adrienne, and Joan’s granddaughter Jhette. It is now back safely in Jhette’s hands. And I instead have the scans of all the photos and that sweet memory of holding the album lovingly in my own hands for several months.

May it stay safe and protected for at least another 160 years.

 

John Nusbaum Album: Of Babies Who Died Too Soon and Family in Peoria

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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.

Nusbaum Album: Frances Nusbaum Seligman Redux

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Before I turn to the photographs that I analyzed on my own (with a few tips from Ava along the way), I want to return to my great-great-grandmother Frances Nusbaum Seligman and my attempts to find her in the album–the album that once belonged to her and has her name on it. Some of this is a review of this post, but with some additional thoughts and images added.

There were several photos in the album that might be Frances based on her birthdate and the date Ava concluded that a photograph might have been taken. For example, on the very first page there is this photograph, which Ava dated as taken in about 1863 when Frances would have been 18; Ava thought the young woman was about 20-22 years old, so just a bit older than Frances would have been. The fact that it appears on the very first page of the album added weight to the possibility that it is Frances.

On the seventh page of the album is this photograph, which Ava also dated as taken in about 1863. Ava thought this woman could be about 25, so slightly older than the one on the first page, but still possibly Frances although Ava ultimately didn’t think so.

Philadelphia c 1863 born abt 1838 maybe Eliza Wiler

Then there is the photograph much later in the album that has an inscription on the back that says it is “Miss Nusbaum” and that it is Joan’s great-grandmother. Ava dated this photograph also in the 1863 time period and thought the woman was a teenager between fifteen and eighteen, placing her birth year very close to Frances’ birth year of 1845. But because this was so late in the album, Ava was skeptical about the inscription.

I added another photograph to this mix just recently. This one was taken in about 1870, and Ava thought the woman in this photograph was about twenty years old, so born in about 1850.

Philadelphia 1869 born about 1848

There was also the fuzzy still from a video of a portrait supposedly of Frances Nusbaum Seligman from Arthur Seligman’s house in Santa Fe.

Finally, there is one image I haven’t shared before and that Ava had not previously evaluated. It is not a CDV and it was not inserted into one of the openings in the album, but was just loose inside the album. It is an image of a portrait that sadly was not labeled.

I wondered whether this was a portrait of Frances, but Ava said that this was painted in the late 1840s, early 1850s so could not be Frances. But it possibly could be Frances’ mother, Jeanette Dreyfuss Nusbaum, my three-times great-grandmother.

I then put together a collage of all six faces to compare them better:

One thing I noticed right away was that five of the women had similar lips—all but the one labeled D. Her lips were more heart-shaped. The other five had similar mouths. E seemed to have eyes that tilted down whereas all the others had eyes that went straight across. A and B are the portraits, A perhaps of Jeanette, B supposedly Frances. The more I looked at the two remaining images—C and F—the more alike they looked to me.

I ran them through two online face comparison websites, and both said that C and F were the same person. None of the others, however, matched C, F, or any of the others as the same person or even close. I asked Ava if she thought C and F were the same person, and her AI programs also found a match.

But Ava had reasons to doubt whether C and F were the same person. She pointed out that C, taken in 1863 or so, looks older than F, taken in 1870 or so. How could C have gotten younger looking seven years later?

Also, F is in a photograph with a young man who one might assume was her husband. She is wearing a wedding ring, and Frances was married in 1865. But the man in the photograph with F is not Frances Nusbaum’s husband, Bernard. Maybe it’s one of her brothers. But from the photograph one would think the man and woman are a couple.

So…bottom line? I still cannot be sure whether any of these women were Frances.

I have sent scans of the six photographs that were taken in Santa Fe to the New Mexico Jewish Historical Society and to the New Mexico History Museum, both in Santa Fe, hoping that perhaps they have somewhere a photograph of Frances. So far I have not heard back that they do. But I will keep hoping that I can someday figure out which woman in the album is my great-great-grandmother Frances Nusbaum Seligman.

Nusbaum Album: Santa Fe Photographs

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I decided to move on from the Philadelphia photographs in the Nusbaum Album even though there were still many more of them in the album because it seemed to be unlikely that I would ever identify anyone.  I asked Ava to focus next on the six photographs taken in Sante Fe, hoping that they would more clearly be of my Santa Fe relatives.

Of those six, three were of young children, two were of adult men, and one was of a couple. My hope was that the couple would be Frances Nusbaum and Bernard Seligman, my great-great-grandparents, the children would be their children, and the two men would be other Seligmans or Nusbaums.

 

Once again there were no tax stamps on these photographs, so Ava concluded that they were taken either before August, 1864, or after August, 1866. Since Bernard and Frances didn’t move to Santa Fe until after 1868, I was hoping that the photographs fell into that later period. These photos also appear more than halfway into the album so were perhaps later than those 1863 to 1870 Philadelphia photographs Ava had already analyzed.

The three photographs of children were all taken by the same photographer, H.T. Hiester. Ava’s research of Hiester revealed that “Henry T. Hiester came to Santa Fe from Texas in the summer of 1871 at the request of Dr. Enos Andrews. Hiester was active in Santa Fe from 1871-1878. He had a studio in West Side Plaza from 1871-1874 and one on Main Street from September, 1874 to March, 1875.”1

Although Ava believed that two of these photographs were taken at the same studio given that they have the same set, back drop, and chair, she concluded that they were not taken at the same time. She opined that they were both of the same child, possibly James Seligman, Bernard and Frances’ older son who was born in 1868 in Philadelphia. She thought the photo on the upper right could be James at three or four and the photo on the lower right James at six or seven.

The baby in the first photograph cannot be James Seligman since he was born in 1868 in Philadelphia before the family moved to Santa Fe. Thus, that baby has to be Arthur Seligman—if it is of one of the children of Bernard and Frances Seligman—as he was the only child of theirs born in Santa Fe, and he was in fact born in 1871, the year that Ava dated the photograph. Perhaps one of the other photographs is of James or perhaps is Arthur as he grew older.

I can see by looking at the coloring on the reverse of these three photos that they might have been taken years apart as they have faded in different ways. (It’s hard to see in the scan below, but they were slightly different shades.) But nevertheless, I can’t imagine why Frances and Bernard would have three photographs of one of their three living children and none of the other two—including my great-grandmother Eva Seligman Cohen, their oldest child. I was so disappointed that there was no photograph of her.

Moving on to the two men photographed in Santa Fe, the one on the same page as the three children (or the three photographs of the one child) was taken by a different Santa Fe photographer, Dr. Enos Andrews (1833-1910). Ava wrote that Andrews had a photography studio in Santa Fe from the end of the 1860s until the early 1870s. Based on her analysis of Santa Fe directory and census listings for Enos Andrews and other factors, Ava concluded this photograph was taken sometime between 1866 and 1871. Since she estimated that the man was about fifty years old, that would mean he was born between 1816 and 1821.2

But who was he? Although the birth year might led me to believe it was John Nusbaum, who was born in 1818, Ava pointed out that in the late 1860s, John (as well as Frances and Bernard until at least 1868) was living in Philadelphia. But it was possible that John went to Santa Fe and had his photograph taken there. After comparing this photograph with the one we thought could be John Nusbaum on the first page, Ava and I both thought it could be the same man and both could be my three-times great-grandfather John Nusbaum.

What about the other photograph of a man taken in Santa Fe on the following page? That photo was taken by Nicholas Brown, who once partnered with Enos Andrews. Ava provided the following background on Nicholas Brown and his son William Henry Brown, who took the photograph of the couple on the same page.

Nicholas Brown (born 1830) was the father of William Henry Brown. Nicholas was active in Santa Fe in 1864-1865. In August of 1866, Nicholas announced the opening of a studio with his son, William. Between 1866 and 1867, William was in partnership with his father in Santa Fe and they advertised the studio as N. Brown & Son and N. Brown E Hijo (1860s in Mexico). At the end of 1870, William was in Mexico. At the beginning of 1871, Nicholas re-opened his studio in Santa Fe but this time it was located on West Side Plaza. Because there is no address on [the reverse of the Nicholas Brown photograph of the bearded man], I am placing this image before 1871.3

Ava dated this photograph as 1866-1867 and estimated the man’s age as 45 to 50, meaning he was born between 1816 and 1822.

I could speculate that maybe this is Bernard’s brother Sigmund Seligman, who lived in Santa Fe from at least 1860 until his death in 1874. Sigmund was born in 1829, so later than the 1816-1821 time frame Ava posited. Could this man be younger than fifty? Could he be in his forties? The beard does make it hard to tell. But it’s possible. So could this be Sigmund? Maybe. Maybe not. I have no idea. Maybe he was a friend of Bernard’s, not his brother. I have no way to know.

Finally, the last photograph from Santa Fe is the one of the couple taken by Nicholas Brown’s son, William Henry Brown. Ava dated this photograph far later than the one taken by Nicholas Brown because William was a partner in his father’s studio in Santa Fe from 1866-1867. By 1870, he was in Mexico. Then he returned to Santa Fe between 1880 and 1884 where he was a partner with George C. Bennett in a photographer studio on West Side Plaza. After 1884 William Henry Brown was no longer living or working in Santa Fe. Based on these facts, Ava dated this photograph at about 1882-1883.4

Ava thought that both the man and the woman were somewhere between 25 and 30 years old, meaning they were born between roughly 1852 and 1858, making them too young to be Bernard and Frances, who were born in 1838 and 1845, respectively. Thus, I have no idea who they are.

The fact that I could not identify the people in these Santa Fe photographs was disappointing. Ava reminded me again about the nature of CDVs—literally, “cartes de visite” or visiting cards. People gave them away, for example, when they came for a visit. And maybe they were taken while visiting and not in their hometown. That meant even those taken in Santa Fe or Philadelphia or elsewhere could be of people who didn’t live in those places. That meant the universe of people who might be in these photographs was anyone who lived during this time period. No wonder we couldn’t identify anyone with any degree of certainty without known photos of them.

The last portion of Ava’s work on this project was devoted to trying to identify the people in some of the photographs taken in Bingen and Mainz, Germany.

  1. Ava Cohn, Analysis of Nusbaum Album #3, January 24, 2024 ↩
  2. See Note 1, supra. ↩
  3. See Note 1, supra. ↩
  4. See Note 1, supra. ↩

John Nusbaum Album: More Philadelphia People—Family, Friends, or Who Knows?

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Having experienced some disappointment with the first batch of Philadelphia photographs from the Nusbaum album, I brainstormed with Ava about how to select the next group. In selecting the next group, I went through the album page by page, starting with the front of the second page. I looked for those that showed full body shots so that Ava would have more clothing to work with in dating the photographs. I also decided that since the photographs tended to be grouped on each page by photographer, I would select one from each page taken by a particular photographer in the hope that there would be some connection between the person I’d selected and the others whose photographs had been taken by that photographer and placed on the same page.

The second page in the album had one photograph taken in Philadelphia:

Since this photograph was taken by Robert Keely, the same photographer who took three of the photographs on the first page, I already knew the background and possible dating of this photograph to be around 1863-1864 (see my prior posts). Ava found additional evidence here in the fringed chair, which was introduced in 1864. She estimated that the little girl was about six years old so born in 1858.1 I theorized that she could be Miriam Nusbaum, John and Jeanette’s second daughter, who was born in 1858. She would have been my three-times great-aunt, Frances Nusbaum’s little sister. Can I be positive? No, since I have no known photograph of Miriam. But given the dating and the location and its placement on the second page of photographs, I think it’s likely.

I then turned to this page in the album. All the photographs on this page were taken by the same photographer, Edward P. Hipple of 820 Arch Street, Philadelphia. Three are head shots and one is a full body photograph of a man.

I asked Ava to analyze the photograph in the upper right.

Ava dated this photograph as taken in about 1863. She wrote, “Hipple operated a studio at 820 Arch Street from 1862 to 1866. In 1865, he opened a second studio in Norristown. Since only the Philadelphia studio is on the reverse of this photo, it is assumed that this is prior to the Norristown studio being added. The lack of a tax revenue stamp places the date before 1864.”  Ava also estimated that the woman in that photograph was about 25 years old, giving her a birthdate of about 1838.2

That conclusion sent me back to my family tree to see if I could find a woman born in about 1838 who was living in Philadelphia in 1863. The choices were limited. My great-great-grandmother Frances was born in 1845 and was living in Philadelphia in 1863, but Ava did not believe the photograph was of Frances, if we assume that the woman on the first page of the album was Frances. But we can’t be 100% certain. Ava tried AI, and it showed a high degree of similarity to the woman in the clip of the video of the portrait of Frances.

The only other family member who could have fit those criteria was Eliza Wiler, the daughter of Caroline Dreyfuss, Jeanette’s sister, and Moses Wiler. Eliza was born in 1842 in Harrisburg, but by 1863 she was married and living in Philadelphia. Eliza had one younger brother Simon (1843) and two younger sisters, Fanny (1846) and Clara (1850). Ava suggested that the four photographs on this page could be a father and his children. Perhaps then this is Moses Wiler at the bottom left with his son Simon and two of his daughters, Eliza and either Fanny or Clara. Maybe. But maybe not.

Turning to the next two pages, there are eight photographs all taken by another Philadelphia photographer, Frederick Gutekunst at 704 & 706 Arch Street, Philadelphia. Here are those two pages:

Ava had this to say about Gutekunst:

Gutekunst had a very prestigious studio in Philadelphia. He has been described as “America’s Most Famous Civil War Era Photographer.” Gutekunst photographed many famous people including Gen. Ulysses Grant, Major General George McClennan, Gen. Philip Sheridan, Walt Whitman, Henry W. Longfellow, Abraham Lincoln as well as other Civil War era celebrities and ordinary Union soldiers both before and around the time of the Battle of Gettysburg. He also photographed images from the Gettysburg battlefield itself.3

Who were these people photographed by this famous photographer? I asked Ava to focus on the woman in the upper left of the first page of Guntekunst photos since it was a full body shot with lots of clothing to help with dating the photo.

Ava thought that the woman was in her late 20s, 28-30, and that the photograph was taken between 1862 and 1864, meaning the woman was likely born in the early 1830s. Ava added these notes to her analysis:4

The woman in this photograph is wearing a ring, though it is on the wrong finger to be a wedding ring. Her hair and dress are also from this same time period.  The dark velvet applique trim on her skirt appears to have been added to an already made dress.  While there is no direct evidence that this has any meaning at all, it could be interpreted, given the time period, that this trim was added as a sign of mourning.

From the following page, I also selected a woman in a full body shot, the one at the lower right.

Ava thought this photograph was also taken between 1862 and 1864 and that this woman was a bit older than the one in a similar dress on the prior page. Comparing their clothing, Ava wrote, “Their dresses are similar, though this woman’s dress has Pamela sleeves which were fashionable at the time. The ruffles on her skirt have no added velvet trim.”5 If this woman was in her early thirties, she would have been born between about 1827 and 1830 or so.

I was at a total loss. There just weren’t any people on my family tree born in the late 1820s, early 1830s who were living in Philadelphia in the early 1860s. John and his siblings were too old; their children were too young. Jeanette Dreyfuss had two sisters born in the 1820s, Caroline in 1822 and Mathilde in 1825, and Mathilde was a widow after her first husband Maxwell died in 1851. But by 1862 she was remarried and presumably not wearing mourning clothes. As for all the other people on those two pages, I have no clues. They all look like adults in the 20s and 30s to me so also born in the 1830s and maybe 1840s, but who they could be is a mystery. Maybe family members, maybe not.

There were two more Philadelphia photographs I asked Ava to analyze, both on this page, the next one in the album:

I asked her to look at the little girl in the upper right and the couple on the lower left. Both were taken by yet another Philadelphia photography studio, Gihon & Jones, John L. Gihon and Alfred T. Jones, at 812 Arch Street, Philadelphia. Ava’s research found that Gihon and Jones were only in partnership at 812 Arch Street for one year, 1869-1870. She also concluded that the girl’s dress was from 1870. Since she thought the girl was between ten and twelve years old, she posited that she was born between 1857 and 1860.5

That means that this could be another photograph of Frances Nusbaum’s sister Miriam, who was born in 1858 and living in Philadelphia in 1870. Comparing this photograph to the one on an earlier page that also was possibly Miriam, I can see some similarity. Or it could be Lottie Nusbaum, the youngest child of John Nusbaum and Jeanette Dreyfuss and Frances’ youngest sibling. Lottie was born in 1863, however, so would have only been seven in 1870. Or…this could be any number of cousins or friends of the family.

1864 born about 1858 Philadelphia could be Miriam Nusbaum

As for the couple in the bottom left, Ava thought the man was around 21, the woman a bit younger, and that the photograph was taken in the year that Gihon and Jones were partners, 1869. That meant the man and woman were born around 1848-1850 or so. Ava ruled out that this was Bernard Seligman and Frances Nusbaum. That left numerous possibilities—too numerous to list and too speculative to list. Could be family, could be friends. We have no way of knowing.

At this point I decided to turn to the photographs from Sante Fe and stop trying to identify anyone in the Philadelphia photographs. There were only six taken in Santa Fe, and there were far fewer relatives who lived in Santa Fe during the mid-19th century. I figured these would be far easier to identify. I wish that were so.

  1. This and other information I received from Ava came from her second report on the album.  Ava Cohn, Analysis of Nusbaum Album #2, December 22, 2023. ↩
  2. See note 1, supra. ↩
  3. See Note 1, supra. ↩
  4. See Note 1, supra. ↩
  5. See Note 1, supra. ↩ ↩

John Nusbaum Album: Will the real Frances Nusbaum please identify herself?

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As I wrote in my last post, I learned from Ava’s information and analysis of the photograph that might be John Nusbaum that without a photograph that was labeled “John Nusbaum” to use for comparison, there was no way to know for sure who that man really was.

Turning to the two photographs of women on the first page, I had hoped that the woman at the bottom of the page would be Frances Nusbaum. Let’s look at Ava’s analysis of this photograph:

It was taken by Keely, the Philadelphia photographer who took the photographs of the two men on this page, and, according to Ava, likely in the same time frame (if not at the same time) as those first two photographs, i.e., 1863 to 1864. Ava estimated that the young woman in the photograph would be 20-22 years old, meaning she was born in the early 1840s.1 Frances Nusbaum was born in 1845. She had no older sister, only older brothers. So this could be Frances.

But I have no other photograph of Frances, just a very blurry still from a video taken of a portrait made when she was much older. Ava didn’t find enough similarity between that blurry image and this photograph to conclude with certainty that this was Frances. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t. The placement on the first page adds weight to the conclusion that this could be Frances, but there is no certainty.

I was further confused about whether this could be Frances when I asked Ava to analyze a different Keely photograph later in the project but worth discussing now. That photograph appears much later in the album, close to the end of the album. But it had a specific inscription on it, one of the very few in the album that did.

The inscription reads “Miss Nusbaum” in one handwriting, and then in a separate hand someone wrote, “Joan’s Great-great-grandmother.” The reference to Joan is almost definitely Joan Seligman, the granddaughter of Arthur Seligman and one of the last people to own the album, according to her granddaughter Jhette. Joan was the great-granddaughter of Frances Nusbaum. Her great-great grandmother with a Nusbaum surname would have been Jeanette Dreyfuss Nusbaum. Could this be either Frances or Jeanette?

Since this was a Keely photograph with no tax stamp, Ava dated it as either before August 1864 or after August 1866; based on the clothing and furniture, she narrowed it down to the earlier period, roughly 1861-1863. She also estimated that the woman in the photograph was a teenager between fifteen and eighteen years old, meaning a birth date between 1843 and 1848.

That meant it could not be Jeanette, who would have been much older than that by 1861, but it could be Frances, who was born in 1845. That seemed the logical answer to me, given the inscription on the back. The misidentification of her as Joan’s great-great-grandmother rather than her great-grandmother seemed minor.

But Ava was skeptical. She did not see a similarity to the woman she thought was Frances on the first page in the album. And she did not see a similarity to the woman in the blurred image from a video of a portrait supposedly of Frances. And she thought it unlikely that if Frances owned the album that her photograph would appear so late in the album.

But what if someone moved the photographs around? What if the photograph on that first page is not Frances? In my mind, the inscription carries more weight than the location in the album, but it’s also possible that the inscription is wrong. Maybe it was a different Miss Nusbaum. Maybe it wasn’t Joan’s ancestor. I don’t know.

Finally, the remaining photograph on the first page, the one I’d hoped was Jeanette Dreyfuss, my three-times great-grandmother, turned out to be the most confusing one of all to identify. It is the very first photograph in the album; it should be of someone very important, you would think. I sure was hoping so.

This photograph was not taken by Keely, who took all the other photographs on the first page, and it was not taken in Philadelphia, but in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. My three-times great-grandparents John and Jeanette (Dreyfuss) Nusbaum had lived in Harrisburg from about 1843 until about 1858. Frances Nusbaum, my great-great-grandmother, was born in Harrisburg in 1845. But by 1860 and thereafter, John and Jeanette and their children were living in Philadelphia. Thus, if this photograph was taken when my Nusbaum ancestors were living in Harrisburg, it had to be taken before 1860.

But Ava concluded that this photograph was taken after 1866. The photographer who took this photograph was Christian S. Roshon, located at “No. 424 (Old No. 110) Market Street Harrisburg, Penna.” By tracing the succession of photographers who worked at this location, Ava found that Roshon succeeded a photographer named Robert S. Henderson, who came after David C. Burnite.  Burnite (Burnite and Weldon’s) had been at 110 Market between 1864 and 1866, and Henderson was there with a photographer named Rogers from 1865-1866. That meant that Roshon didn’t occupy that address until 1866 or later, meaning that the first photograph in the album was taken after 1866. My Nusbaum ancestors were in Philadelphia by then, not in Harrisburg.

Since Ava estimated that the woman in the photograph was in her early 20s (20-22), she could not be Jeanette, who would have been far older than that by 1866. She might be Frances, who was 21 in 1866, but since Frances was no longer living in Harrisburg and was married to Bernard by 1866, that seemed unlikely.

So who could this young woman who holds the first spot in the album be? I searched my tree for a relative born in about 1845 who would have been living in Harrisburg in 1866. I could only find two women who came close to fitting into those parameters: Paulina and Sophia Dinkelspiel, daughters of Mathilde Nusbaum (John’s sister) and Isaac Dinkelspiel. Paulina was born in Germany in 1840, and Sophia was also born in Germany in 1849. Both were living in Harrisburg in the late 1860s. They were first cousins to Frances Nusbaum and John Nusbaum’s nieces.

Could that photograph be of Paulina or Sophia? Sure. But is the photo of either one of them? I have no idea. And if it is one of Frances’ cousins/John’s nieces, why would she be the first one in the album? It really doesn’t make much sense to me, but I also can’t disagree with Ava’s expert analysis of the dates of the photograph or the age of its subject.

Also, it’s important to remember that these CDVs could have been taken when someone was visiting from another town. Maybe Frances or someone else went to Harrisburg to visit her cousins and had her photograph taken while there. Of course, once you factor in that possibility, the photographer’s location becomes a less defining factor for identifying who was who in any of the photographs.

I decided to try a different approach with the next set of photographs.

  1. The references to Ava’s analysis in this post all come from her first report, Ava Cohn, Analysis of Nusbaum Album #1, December 16, 2023 ↩

Nusbaum Album: Is this John Nusbaum? Is that Bernard Seligman?

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After retaining Ava Cohn’s services to help me with the album of photos (“the Nusbaum album”) I’d obtained from an antique dealer in Santa Fe and selecting, with Ava’s advice, where to begin, I waited anxiously to see what Ava could tell me about the album and the first four photos we’d decided to start with, the ones on the very first page:

First page in the Nusbaum album

I had been staring at these over and over while waiting to hear back from Ava. Could the two on top be my three-times great-grandparents Jeanette Dreyfuss and John Nusbaum? Could the two on the bottom be my great-great-grandparents Bernard Seligman and Frances Nusbaum? I was hoping so. Wouldn’t that be a logical assumption to make?

But alas, I quickly learned that hopes and assumptions are not a reliable method for identifying photographs.

Ava started her analysis by providing some background on the album itself. She wrote, “The album was manufactured and sold by Henry Altemus Company of Philadelphia. Altemus and Company first published photographic albums in 1862 and remained in business until 1936….The album is one of Altemus’ larger albums, holding four cartes de visite (CDV) photographs per page.  The photographs are CDVs measuring 2 3/8” x 4.”1

One thing that Ava explained is that cartes de visite, as their name suggests, were used as calling cards. When someone visited, they would leave their photograph as a memento of that visit. That meant that, unlike a modern photograph album where most of the photographs are likely to be of family members and close friends, this album could include photographs of anyone who stopped in to visit the Nusbaums and the Seligmans.

Ava shared this poem that illustrates how CDVs were used:

Ashford, Brothers & Co, Album Filler Poem, c. 1865

Ava’s report continued with some observations about the photographs and some of the issues involved in analyzing them, including the fact that most of the photographs in the album show only heads or heads and shoulders of their subjects. Because Ava did not have the ability to see other details of what they were wearing, it would be more challenging to provide exact dating of the photographs.

Nevertheless, Ava was able to reach several conclusions about the dates when the photographs on the first page were taken. She concluded that the three from Philadelphia were taken in the Civil War era, but not between August, 1864, and August, 1866. As she explained, “Tax stamps were issued by Union states and were required to be placed on the backs of photographs from August, 1864 to August, 1866 to raise money for the war effort.”2 Since these photographs did not have tax stamps on them, they had to have been taken either before August, 1864, or after August, 1866.

With that time period in mind, Ava then focused on the specific photographers who took these first four photographs. Three of the photographs on the first page of the album were taken by Robert N. Keely; his address, as indicated on the back of these three photographs, was “N.W. cor. Fifth & Coates Sts., Philadelphia.” Ava found Keely listed in Philadelphia directories at that address or at nearby addresses throughout the 1850s and 1860s and into the 1870s.

Knowing that these three photographs were taken during that era, Ava then focused on the three individual photographs on that first page that were taken by Keely. First, she looked at this one:

Based on her estimate of his age (50 years old) and the possible dating of the photograph between 1863 and 1864, Ava concluded that the man in the photograph was likely born around 1813-1814. John Nusbaum, my three-times great-grandfather was born on November 26, 1814, according to the family bible. Ava and I speculated that the man in the photograph could be John Nusbaum, given those dates and given the placement of the photograph on the first page.

I was excited by this analysis, but also realized that nothing could be certain. Without another photograph of John, we had no truly definitive way of being sure this was in fact John Nusbaum. That was an important first lesson I learned from Ava’s work on the album.

Another photo taken by Keely that appears on the first page of the album is this one:

Philadelphia c 1863, born about 25 years, could be Bernard or a Nusbaum son

I had hoped this was Bernard Seligman. But Ava was not convinced. She dated this photograph in that same 1863-1864 time frame and found that the man was 20-25 years old, meaning the man was born roughly between 1838 and 1844; Bernard was born in 1837 so within some reasonable margin of error of that estimate. But Bernard and Frances didn’t marry until 1865. Would they have had their photographs taken before they were married?

Possibly, but there was another obstacle. When I shared the photographs I do have of Bernard as a young man and as an older man as well as the blurry still from a video taken of his supposed portrait, I could see similarities, but Ava was certain that the man in the album was not Bernard.

 

Bernard Seligman

So who was he? Maybe one of John and Jeanette’s sons? Adolphus was born in 1842, Simon in 1843, and Julius in 1848. It could be any one of them, but I have no photographs of any of them. So who knows… It would make sense that John and Jeanette would have put one of their sons on the first page, but I can’t be certain.

What about the two women on that first page? Were they Jeanette Dreyfuss Nusbaum and Frances Nusbaum Seligman? That will be discussed in the next post.

  1. Ava Cohn, Analysis of Nusbaum Album #1, December 16, 2023 ↩
  2. See note 1, supra. ↩

The Nusbaum Album: An Introduction

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Some of you may recall that last fall I received a call from an antique dealer in Santa Fe who had in her shop a photograph album with the names John Nusbaum and Frances Nusbaum engraved on the front and rear covers, respectively. I immediately knew that this album had belonged to my three-times great-grandfather John Nusbaum and his daughter Frances, my great-great-grandmother. Frances had married my great-great-grandfather Bernard Seligman and moved from Philadelphia to Sante Fe, where they raised their children, as I told in my family history novel, Santa Fe Love Song.

I agreed to purchase the album and when it arrived, I marveled at the collection of almost two hundred photographs of people I hoped were my relatives—or at least I hoped that some of them would be. But except for a handful of those photographs, there were no labels or names to identify the people in them. Almost all, however, had a photographers’ stamp that indicated where they were taken.

The largest group of photographs (43) were taken in Philadelphia, where John Nusbaum had settled after immigrating from Schopfloch, Germany, in about 1840. He had initially been a peddler traveling throughout Pennsylvania, but eventually settled in Philadelphia and established a dry goods store there. He married Jeanette Dreyfuss, another German immigrant, and had six children, my great-grandmother Frances being the third child and oldest daughter. Thus, I assumed many of the Philadelphia photographs were of John and his family as well as of other family members and friends. But who was who? I had no idea.

Not surprisingly, the next largest group of photographs were taken in Germany, including some taken in Mainz and some in Bingen, the two larger cities closest to Gau-Algesheim where Bernard Seligman and his siblings were born and raised. There were also photographs taken in other German cities, such as Stuttgart, Berlin, and Wiesbaden.

There were eight photographs taken in Santa Fe, where Frances Nusbaum had moved with her husband Bernard and their three older children in about 1870. Their youngest child Arthur Seligman was born in Santa Fe, but my great-grandmother Eva Seligman was born in 1866 in Philadelphia.

Three photographs were taken in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and several were taken in Lewistown, Pennsylvania, two locations where John and Jeanette’s siblings lived in Pennsylvania, so I assumed that those photographs were likely of those Nusbaum/Dreyfuss cousins. The remaining photographs were taken in other places such as New York City; Montgomery, Alabama; Wheeling, West Virginia; Peoria, Illinois; and St. Louis, Missouri.

Each page in the album has four slots for photographs. On the first four pages of the album, there are two photos, back-to-back, in each slot so that you cannot see the reverse of the photos without pulling them out of the slots. Then starting on the fifth page in the album, there are only four photos on each page, and the reverse of those photos shows through on the back of the slot on the back of the page.

What it took me a long time to realize is that all the photos squeezed into the back of those on the first four pages are photographs from Germany. I think that these photographs from Germany may have been added once all the other slots were filled. They likely belonged to Bernard Seligman and were added after he married Frances. I will get to these photographs in a later post, but my reason for mentioning this here is to indicate that I think that aside from those German photos, the others were probably placed by John, Jeanette, or Frances Nusbaum.

The photographs appear to be somewhat grouped together by the location where the photographs were taken and by photographer. The photographs seem to follow roughly this geographical order: Pennsylvania, including many from Philadelphia, but also Harrisburg and Lewistown; then two pages from Peoria, Illinois; then three pages of Santa Fe photographs; then some from New York City and other places; and then photographs from Germany (plus the ones on the reverse of the first few pages). There are also some that appear in random places within the album, but overall this is how the album is arranged.

Since I only had names on a handful of photographs and since I had no idea when the photographs were taken, I decided to retain the expert services of Ava Cohn, aka Sherlock Cohn, the Photo Genealogist. Long time readers of my blog know that I have had great success hiring Ava in the past to help me identify people in old photographs.

With the financial support of my brother and my cousins Marcia and Terry, I asked Ava to help me with this new project. I also agreed to sell the album after Ava and I were done with it to my cousin Jhette for the price I paid to the antique dealer; that way I had more money to hire Ava. Although I was sad to think that I would not be able to keep the album, I knew that Jhette, another descendant of Bernard Seligman and Frances Nusbaum, would take good care of it.

Because of the large number of photographs and my limited resources, I had to limit the scope of Ava’s work. I asked her only to date the photographs and to estimate the ages of the people in them. I was not asking her to do any identification of the people. I was hoping that with those two bits of dating information, I’d be able to deduce who the people were in the photographs—or at least narrow down the possibilities—by studying my family tree.

I also had to limit her work to about 20-25 of the almost two hundred photographs in the album. I decided to focus on those taken in Philadelphia, Santa Fe, Mainz, and Bingen because I knew that those would most likely be of my direct ancestors. As noted above, I figured that the Harrisburg, Peoria, and Lewistown photographs were of Nusbaum/Dreyfuss cousins. I had no idea who in the family (if anyone) lived in Berlin, Stuttgart, or Wiesbaden, Germany, or for that matter in St. Louis, Wheeling, or Montgomery. I knew of one branch that lived in New York, but not direct ancestors.

But because there were so many photographs taken in Philadelphia, I had to find some way to narrow down Ava’s work so that she could have the best chance of identifying the people in the photographs I chose. Based on her suggestions, we started with the photographs on the first page, figuring that those would most likely be the closest relatives if not the owners of the album; three of those were taken by the same photographer in Philadelphia. The fourth and the very first photograph in the album was taken in Harrisburg. There were two men and two women. In my wildest dreams, I was hoping that they were of John and Jeanette and Frances and Bernard.

Here are those first four photographs:

In my next two posts I will share what I learned from Ava about these four photographs and how I decided to choose the remaining 15-20 photographs for her to analyze. This will be a multipart series of posts devoted to the Nusbaum album.

 

An Exciting New Project in the Works!

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Before I move on to the next child of Moses Blumenfeld I, I have two other matters to write about. In my next post I will share some wonderful photographs that my cousin Robin shared with me. Robin, my fifth cousin, once removed, is descended from Abraham Blumenfeld and Geitel Katz through their son Moses I. More details to follow in the next post.

But today’s post is about some other amazing photographs. A couple of months ago I received an email out of the blue from an antiques dealer in Santa Fe named Peggy Gonzalez. Peggy had found me through my blog while looking for a descendant of John Nusbaum, my three times great-grandfather and my father’s namesake. Over thirty years ago at an estate sale, she had acquired a photograph album engraved with the name John Nusbaum on the front. She wanted to know whether I would be interested in buying the album.

At first I was skeptical. There are so many scams out there today. Anyone could have found my blog and made this up. But Peggy sounded honest, and she sent me these scans of the front and back of the album as well as a few representative photos. The back is engraved with “To F. Nusbaum.” My great-great-grandmother was John Nusbaum’s daughter Frances Nusbaum Seligman, and she had lived much of her adult life in Santa Fe with her husband Bernard, my great-great-grandfather. Peggy’s story seemed to be authentic.

 

I was extremely excited—as you might imagine. I’ve never seen a photograph of John Nusbaum or Frances, and here was a whole album of photos. Almost 200 photos. Thanks to the generosity of some of my Seligman/Nusbaum/Cohen relatives, I arranged to purchase the album. I also got extraordinary help from Mike Lord, our guide in Santa Fe from 2014 and a close friend of my cousin Pete. He acted as the middleman between Peggy and me, retrieving the album and giving Peggy my check and then sending me the album.

The album is now safely in my house, back in the hands of one of John Nusbaum’s descendants. I have retained the services of Ava Cohn, aka Sherlock Cohn, the Photogenealogist, and am now waiting in her queue for her to have time to devote to this project. I’ve scanned the front and back of all the photos. They are all studio photographs—cabinet photos, I think they are called. Small, but very clear. And they all have the names and addresses of the photographers on the reverse side. But only three have any identification of the people in the photograph.

There are photographs that were taken in several cities in Germany as well as all over the US: Philadelphia, New York, Santa Fe, Peoria, Lewistown (PA), and St. Louis. I am hoping that if Ava can provide dates for when they were taken and perhaps the ages of the people, I can then figure out who these people are.

I will wait to share the photos until after I have had the benefits of Ava’s help, but I wanted to share now my excitement about this. Stay tuned for more!