Friday, March 30, 2018

The Old Homestead in Old Allegheny ~ 52 Ancestors #13

I am participating in this year's 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks writing challenge from Amy Johnson Crow. Each week has an optional writing prompt and this week's writing prompt is The Old Homestead.

I thought I only had one image of this house on Perrysville Avenue in Allegheny City, Pennsylvania, which I originally shared at Hunter Family Home and I share again here:


This home was built by my third great-grandfather, James Hunter, whose wonderfully-detailed obituary I previously shared.

After my second great-grandparents (James Hunter and Mary Freeland Hunter) both died in 1902, it appeared that the Hunter family continued to live there, as they are found at 3623 Perrysville Avenue in the 1910 U.S. Census. This means that my grandmother and her sisters lived in this home with many of their Hunter aunts and uncles before moving to Berkeley, California in about 1911.

However, I recently digitized a bunch of very old negatives mostly from my maternal grandmother's side of the family and found many treasures!

Check out these additional images of the house taken from the street.




The third photo has a telephone pole in the center with a flyer attached. I zoomed in and could read "Franklin P. Bo???" and "County Controller."



With some creative searching, ultimately searching U.S. census records for Franklin P. (exact), no last name, living in Pittsburgh, Allegheny County, United States (exact to county), I found Franklin P. Booth, born about 1868-1869. Searching Newspapers.com for Franklin P. Booth with location Pittsburgh and date range of 1900 to 1910, I found that he ran for County Controller on the Republican ticket in 1905 and won the November 7 election that year after a mid-September primary.

Because of the fullness of the leaves on the trees, I theorize that these photographs (the last three) were taken in September 1905.

8 comments:

  1. How did you digitize old negatives?

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    1. Irene, I have a Canon 9000F Mark II digital scanner which can digitize smaller negatives, as well as photographs and documents. For larger ones (I have some that are 3" x 5"), I brought them to a local company (Newton, Massachusetts) that, for a fee, digitized them for me.

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  2. Very enjoyable post, particularly the sleuthing!

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    1. Glad you enjoyed it and I'm also glad you appreciated the sleuthing - that was fun for me! Thanks for the comment.

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  3. SOOOO neat! And, love that old house. Great photos and detective work!

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    1. Glad you enjoyed the post - I love the photos of the old house too and find it sad that it no longer exists.

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  4. It's amazing how often a house is the background for a family photo. Once I was able to figure out the house, I often times saw it over and over again.

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    1. Debi, very true! See My 3rd Great Grandmother for a couple of group photos next to this house.
      Thanks for the comment!

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