Photographer updates

Post Cards

Updates, in most cases involving new CDV images, have been made to the following Victorian or Edwardian Photographers, to help with dating examples of their work.

Atherstane Basebe of Hertford, Hemel Hempstead and Watford
Misses M & A Austin of St Albans
Thomas Milburn Cooper of St Albans
Fred Downer of Watford
Thomas Benwell Latchmore of Hitchin
William Norman of Royston
Samuel Glendenning Payne of Aylesbury, Thame and Tring

Brief Notes on Other Activities in September

Fewer posts upfront last month - but over 6,400 page views on the Newsletter and while the number of visitors to the main site is less than in September 2013, the number of pages views was higher. I was involved in a lot of activity in the background (see below), including some computer problems with upgrade to Windows 8.1 and entertaining our Australian visitor - with visits to Bletchley Park and the British Schools Museum.

Karaktus. I have acquired another card in this distinctive series by an unknown St Albans artist but half a dozen of the series still escape me.

Ben Tomlin discovered the page on the photographer Samuel Glendenning Payne, and we discover we share Rolls family ancestors, starting from William Rolls (1726-1798) and Mary Devonshire (1729-1804) of Bicester, Oxfordshire.

I have added an attractive post card of the Old Red Lion public house, High Street, Bushey, from about 1910 by a Watford stationer, Jackson & Co.

I have had several queries recently where people have asked for help who appear to have never read a general guide on family history, have never brought a birth, marriage or death certificate to check details, and have limited their activities to the indexes on one or two web sites. As a result they had made a very elementary mistake of assuming that is a name and date are approximately right it MUST BE MY ANCESTOR!!!! Perhaps I should insist that everyone should look at Right Name, Wrong Body" before asking me a question.

I have added a post card from about 1910 showing two thatched cottages in Widford.

I have added information about Grove School, Watford, in  1932

Gatward Clock

I have added a note about the 250 years booklet about Gatward, Jeweller, of Hitchin.

John has written that he has some post cards written to Mary Burrage of Abbots Langley and asks if anyone is interested.

I have updated the link to FreeBMD (no longer part of Rootsweb) and also the link to the Football Club History Database on the Apsley Football page.

To see what happened I have pinned a picture of the Apsley Football team on Historypin. As the picture has Apsley parish church in the background the location can be identified to be in one corner of the car park attached to Sainsbury's supermarket. As expected Historypin insisted in moving the pin from the correct position onto the London Road - demonstrating that the package is unsuitable for accurately recording historical data on a map.

There have been some additional replies and retweets on @HertsGenealogy

I have had several requests for high resolution images, which have been supplied and I have sent about half a dozen other emails on minor points ...

Early Postcards of Tring

Tring

As part of my office tidy I am trying to get my post card files into a more sensible order. In most cases this will not impact on the site but I have decided to ensure that the comparatively small number of early post cards - (prior 1903 - with undivided backs) are documented, with higher resolution images available online. I have started documenting there cards with some of Tring.

While there are six different views all have the same layout, but no publisher details. However one of the pictures (the one shown above) also occurs on a later post card circa 1905 where the publisher was Samuel Glendenning Payne, of Aylesbury. Samuel had a shop in Tring between about 1895 and 1907, and published a lot of Tring cards after about 1903 so he was probably the photographer and publisher of the undivided back cards,

Aylesbury, Bucks - Home of my Maternal Ancestors

From the Meadows surrounding Aylesbury can be obtained a pretty view of the town, which has been said to be the "model of what a county town should be." Houses clustered together in picturesque confusion, trees lifting their heads above the red tiled roofs, and prominent over all the short tower and spire of the parish church of St Mary's, all combining to form a pleasing picture of an English County Town.

Aylesbury is of particular interest because there are many contacts between the town and the Tring area of Hertfordshire. The Aylesbury Arm of the Grand Union Canal and the route of a railway line that served the town both run through Hertfordshire. In addition a number of my ancestors lived in Aylesbury.

I have added two new post card views and a link to Samuel Glendening Payne, an Aylesbury photographer who published a  number of post cards of North West Hertfordshire. 

Dating Old Photographs

The Find My Past Blog has a series of pages on the dating of old photographs by Jayne Shrimpton which you may find useful. I was delighted to see that she had found my web site helpful when dating this carte de visite by Samuel Glendenning Payne. She writes:

Fig.5  Cabinet print, Mr & Mrs S G Payne & Son, Aylesbury, c.1897-1902 - click to enlarge. When multiple studio addresses appear on a card mount, this often aids photographer research. A general internet search for the Payne family of photographers led to the website, www.hertfordshire-genealogy.co.uk. This didn’t supply full operational dates for all three branches, but confirmed that the Tring studio only existed between 1895 and 1907. Other dating techniques, including dress clues, narrowed further the date of the photograph. (Katharine Williams)