Whillie Batt & Mark Anthony Capewell

Pictured above is Whillie Batt and Mark Anthony Capewell, parents of John Batt Capewell of Westville, New Jersey. It looks like John set Mom and Dad up in a lodgepole love seat for a semi-formal portrait outdoors more than a century ago.

Mr and Mrs Capewell appeared in another portrait along with John’s brothers and sisters. I posted about this negative here.

Both Whillie and Mark were born in New Jersey and lived in Philadephia.

According to the 1880 census:

1880 Census
Philadelphia, District 681, Pennsylvania

 Mark Capewell, head, age 29, glass blower, born in New Jersey, father born in England, mother born in Ireland

Whillie Capewell, wife, age 23, keeping house, born in New Jersey, father born in Pennsylvania, mother born in New Jersey

It’s interesting that Mark was a glass blower. Originally I assumed that these Capewells were related to the Henry Capewell that ran a glass factory in Westville, NJ. That factory had closed well before Mark Capewell had begun his career. Perhaps it was a coincidence that they were all named Capewell.

Mark was born in 1850 and died in 1912 (100 years ago!) Whille was born in 1857 and died in California in 1936. Apparently Whille had relocated to the West Coast with some of her children following her husband’s death.

As with all of the photographs in the Capewell Collection, I placed the 5″ x 7″ glass negative on a lightbox and shot them with a digital camera locked down on a tripod. The “processing” was done digitally on a Mac using Adobe Photoshop.