Tuesday’s Tip: Assess Accuracy of Photo Captions-Springsteen-Beerbower and Helbling Families
Helbling Family, Springsteen Family, Beerbower Family (Click for Family Tree)
Tuesday’s Tip: Assess the accuracy of photo captions by looking at clothes, backgrounds, hairstyles, age of subjects, etc. in all the pictures on one page. Images that have too many differences may not actually be ‘attached’ to a date or caption nearby.
Yesterday’s post, “Matrilineal Monday: Easter, 1914 with the Helblings,” included an image that had “Easter 1914” written on it by Anna “May” (Beerbower) Helbling. The scan of the whole page is important to see how /where the date is written and the relationship to other photos.
Unless the little ones changed out of their Easter best clothes, the picture of Anna Missouri (Springsteen) Beerbower with her grandchildren may have been taken on another date. The children look a bit older, too.
Those ‘of an age’ to remember putting pictures in a photo album, may also recall just adding a picture in here and there, if there was space.
This second picture was possibly on another page, but does seem to be the same time as the first picture of Anna Missouri and her grandchildren. Her clothing looks more like a robe than a dress, so it does seem to be a different day than Easter Sunday.
Knowing a bit of history helps- or muddies the analysis- when assessing a photo too. In April of 1914, the world still had some of the innocence seen in the Easter Sunday images of yesterday’s post. By August of that year, Europe had become embroiled in World War I; the United States would join the fight in 1917. Were Edgar’s homemade ‘swords,’ wooden ‘rifle,’ and play reflecting the world at war in later 1914? Or was it typical boy’s play? If we knew the answer, it would help us to better date the photos.
Three more important tips:
- When scanning photo albums, it is important to scan the whole page, in addition to individual photos, in order to maintain the context.
- Look critically at all that is on the page to ensure that any date or caption is truly attached to any one picture.
- When writing about the image, or adding a caption to the photo, be careful about the wording if there is a question as to the date. Note the above captions do not actually state the date, but only the date listed on the page where they were found.
Notes, Sources, and References:
- Helbling Family Photo Album.
- “Matrilineal Monday: Easter, 1914 with the Helblings”– http://heritageramblings.net/2018/04/02/matrilineal-monday-easter-1914-with-the-helblings/
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