Here’s another glass negative group shot by John Capewell of Westville, New Jersey where he has inserted himself and operates his camera’s shutter remotely with a length of string. Capewell is the fellow seated on the ground on the right. I can’t detect the string he’s using, but his hand is slightly blurred from a quick tug.
John’s wife Ella is seated next to John and standing by her may be one of her sons. This guy sort of looks like Henry, their youngest. It may be John, Junior stretched out in front of her.
I’m not sure who the other people are. It may be Capewell’s mother-in-law standing behind him. We’ve seen this woman before.
They could be in Westville which had farms and open fields early in the twentieth century.
About The Capewell Glass Negative Collection
The Capewell Glass Negative Collection is a series of about 200 5-inch by 7-inch glass negatives shot early in the 20th Century by John Batt Capewell (1878-1951) of Westville, New Jersey. John passed the negatives down to his son Henry who left them in his wife’s possession upon his passing. Henry’s widow didn’t know what to do with them and didn’t particularly want them so she offered them to my Dad who couldn’t turn down anything. Ultimately I wound up with them and thought I would one day have photographic prints struck from them. That didn’t happen, but I came up with the digital workaround of placing the negatives on a lightbox and rephotographing them with a digital camera. The “processing” was then done on a computer with image editing software. They came out better than I thought they would so I thought I would show them off to the world on this site. Many of these pictures have not been seen in a century, and I’m proud to be presenting them today.
At first, I did not know who the people were in the photographs. I have a box of ephemera that accompanied the negatives and snagged a few clues from that as far as the Capewell name. I did some research on the internet and had a few false starts and wrong turns, but the readers of these posts have provided a remarkable amount of research and detail. I’m amazed at what people have turned up sifting through public records and such!
Check out the comments section of last week’s post! Debora Pallante Hill stopped by our site and provided some fascinating information regarding the Capewells. Thanks, Debora!
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Hey Joe; Finally. Every one smile for the camera.
The boys are a little half-hearted with the smiles.