This Drives Me Straight Up A Wall!

     Every couple of weeks I check out the new offerings on Ebay.  Believe it or not I've found some pretty cool things there, like a post card written by my great, great Aunt Flora Worden Post, a photo of my Worden cousins from the turn of the century and my latest, a photo of George Worden and his wife Eva which caused me to research him in depth and resulted in the Native American furor of a few weeks ago, (still working on that one).

     Yesterday I found this:

     
     This is the first time I've found a photograph taken in Shortsville, NY!  This Lovell Studio would have been the closest one to my  O'Hora relatives who put down roots in a tiny hamlet called Littleville just outside Shortsville after leaving the Auburn area.  So, is it one of them?  I don't know, even worse I never will.  There is no writing of any sort to indicate who this person might be.

     The photo is what's called a cabinet card which was most popular around the 1880's, the right time period my ancestors may have had their picture taken.  I've been unable to find much about photographer M. S. Lovell, or when he operated in Shortsville.  A Goggle and Ebay search revealed a photographer named M. S. Lovell in Oswego, NY, not Shortsville.  Shortsville was a pretty small place though, maybe he moved on to greener pastures and that's why I've never seen another photo taken in Shortsville.  And in the end I guess it really doesn't matter.

     There are so many of these nameless images out there.  I always feel sad seeing them online or mouldering away in some dusty antique shop.  They were once living, breathing, loved human beings, now they are reduced to nameless faces peering back at us across the centuries.  It reminds me to write those names on my pictures, and label them online as the case now may be.  Hopefully some future genealogist will appreciate the effort.