Circa 1846 Daguerreotype – Alexander Joy Cartwright debate

[bmarlowe1]

..
>> It is the most tortured rational conceivable to say that…

Real rock solid provenance would include reliable 19thC documentation attributable to AJC that describes and identifies the photo (such as a mention in his letter to Debost ). What we have instead is several early documented very odd “missed opportunities” where one would have expected that such a significant artifact would be mentioned or discussed (pp 30-31), followed by the rather sudden appearance of the photo in the mid-1930’s. There is nothing “tortured” in being suspicious of that.

I’ve received a number of emails from people who have had difficulty identifying or have misidentified youthful photos of grandparents, great uncles, etc. – this is not uncommon (there are several posts here that attest to that). The AJC that Bruce Jr. knew from life was an old man as seen in the old man photos in the newsletter. We don’t know what Bruce’s facial recognition skills were, but we do know how bad such skills can be.

One thing that would have been missing in the Carwright for HoF campaign was a nice team photo with AJC (the team photo in Spalding’s book did not include AJC, nor did the 1862 team salt print). Perhaps Bruce Jr. found the HPD somewhere and talked himself into believing it was what he needed (certainly collectors often do just that). Also bizarre – perhaps. I don’t pretend to know what happened here, but there is no narrative concerning the HPD that I have heard that easily connects the dots. This is a thick story for which we have only very thin conflicting slices. One needs to reflect on how little we actually know.

[barrysloate]

Scott- that photograph is ca. 1859, and by then uniforms were worn by players. In the late 1840's, I just don't know.

[barrysloate]

Recently I was looking at a photograph of my grandfather (he died in 1932, 20 years before I was born). Next to him stood his brother. The two of them looked so much alike that I could not distinguish my grandfather from my great uncle. It's not that I didn't know what my grandfather looked like, it's just that he and his brother were such a close match. Take that for what it's worth.

[barrysloate]

Thanks Mark. That was one of those things I was curious about.

[Runscott]

Originally Posted by barrysloate

Recently I was looking at a photograph of my grandfather (he died in 1932, 20 years before I was born). Next to him stood his brother. The two of them looked so much alike that I could not distinguish my grandfather from my great uncle. It's not that I didn't know what my grandfather looked like, it's just that he and his brother were such a close match. Take that for what it's worth.

Barry, it's worth a lot. My great-grandfather presents a situation similar to what you describe - I sent a picture of him as a young man, to my father (who knew him much better than I did), and my father was certain that it was actually his uncle. My father was wrong. Apparently, this is common.

It's reasonable to think that ANY photo of a young AJC that AJC's grandson looked at, would have had little resemblance to the older AJC that he actually knew. For that reason, it's also reasonable to think that his grandson would have simply picked the best picture out of the ones he had available - he was probably proudest of this one, because it featured 'the team'. Just as Corey thinks the dag AJC looks like the other AJC photos he has, AJC's grandson could have felt just as certain. As far as the provenance he had - he could very well have been told by a relative who really didn't know (was half blind or had a bad memory, or other) that the team pic had AJC in it, when in fact it had AJC's brother or cousin.