Here’s another group shot photographed in the early twentieth century by John Capewell who has included himself in the picture. He’s the second from the left and has rendered himself blurry from the sudden motion of tugging the string that triggers his camera’s shutter release.
To the left of Capewell is his wife Ella who may have been his sweetheart when this was shot. They look fairly young, and the style of clothing would put it very early in the 1900s.
I notice that Ella is wearing the same curious purse attached to her waist. We’ve seen that before.
To the right is a couple that appear a number of times in the Capewell Collection. The man is John’s brother. I assume that the woman is his sweetheart/spouse.
Here is the entire glass negative.
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!
Last: With Some Folks in a Field
