This is the last of the series of parade pictures shot by John B Capewell of Westville, New Jersey featuring the men and women of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows marching in celebration of the return of the fighting men from the fronts of World War I.
I had sent this series of images to the astounding JerseyMan who has always graciously and generously shared his knowledge of all things New Jersey with this humble site. Upon seeing the photos he replied:
These images are fabulous! All of the photographs are of various organizations associated with the Independent Order of Odd Fellows (IOOF), a fraternal organization. The local lodge of IOOF in Westville, which met at the Union Fire Company’s hall on Broadway, was the Crown Point Lodge no. 268. You will find the IOOF’s logo features a three-link chain with an F in the first link, an L in the second link, and a T in the third link. These letters stand for Friendship, Love and Truth. Associated with the IOOF lodge in Westville was the FLT Club for teenage boys. Likewise, the Mount Olivet Lodge no. 68 is the local lodge for the Rebekahs, an arm of the IOOF for young ladies in their teenage years. It is apparent that a close relationship existed between the Westville IOOF lodge and the fire company. If you look at the last two images below, the horse-drawn float is actually one of the ladder wagons from the fire company.
So what we have below is the teenaged Odd Fellows’ float for this particular parade.
As far as the subject matter and the way the FLT guys are made up, all I can say is that it was nearly a century ago, and, to use a tired phrase, “it is what it is.” I said I was going to publish the 200 glass negatives that comprise the Capewell Collection and I aim to do it warts and all.
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!
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Another neat one, thanks!
Thanks!