Family Travels and Activities, 1890s

Description

An album of approximately 100 photographs, seemingly documenting family travels and activities in the 1890s [included is one dated photograph of the Cambridge Commandery, 1892]. It includes several photographs purchased from or distributed by, the following photographers: Maude and Company, Los Angeles, (Western Views, California); Savage, Salt Lake City, Utah; Ironmonger, Santa Cataline, California; Slocum, San Diego, California.
Interspersed with these largely professional views are platinum prints by an amateur photographer, recording --among other subjects-- a clambake; a picnic; shorefront scenes, possibly in Maine; family gathering at a New England hotel; swanboats in the Public Garden, Boston; the interior of a jewelry store; a stone quarry. Also, what appear to be family gatherings at Plymouth Rock. Of particular interest are the photographs of a group of young back men, and a portrait of a young black boy with a smaller child, possibly made by an amateur photographer, possibly in the vicinity of Hampden, Virginia ( though this is pure speculation). Other views, connected sequentially with these, suggest a southern U. S. locale ( trees with live moss, for example). Several are identified as St. Augustine, Florida.
Overall, this is an unusual album, both for its pictorial quality, and for its unusual subject matter.
The compiler is unknown, though it seems likely to have been connected with a Cambridge [?] Mass. family active in church affairs [probably Methodist or Baptist??]. The dates may be somewhat broader than suggested by the one dated photograph of 1892.