19th Century Photo Album of James & Orilla Holden of Whitby, Ontario 

Sketch of Album from carte de visite Typical 19th Century Studio, from carte de visite

The Album

Rediscovered Nov/2001 at Helen (Cudworth) Holden's apartment locker in London, Ont. I remember last seeing it in Dad's study (the Rev. James R. Holden, grandson of James and Orilla) in Vankleek Hill, Ont. in the early 1960's. I'm pretty certain it did belong to James & Orilla; from whom else might it have come to be in the possession of their grandson? A possible alternative theory is that it belonged to James' parents, James Sr. and Frances (Hamilton).

The binding has disintegrated but many of the photos are in excellent condition. Unfortunately, few are inscribed with names or other information. However, many are stamped with the name and address of the photographer and that provides some clues to where unidentified people may have lived. Whitby, Oshawa, Port Perry, Peterborough, Perth, Picton, Prince Albert and Toronto in Ontario; Emerson, Manitoba; Belfast, Armagh, London overseas.

Towns in Ontario province are also indicated to be in "C.W.", Canada West, as the province was known before Confederation in 1867. This suggests that some photos may pre-date Confederation although it is possible that Canada West may have continued in common usage after this date. Photos from Ireland correlate well with James' letters to Orilla on his trip there in 1869.

WWW Presentation

Each photo has been carefully removed, scanned and converted to a medium quality JPEG image file and returned to the position it was found in. These files have been uploaded not only to this web site but also to PicasaWeb which has a more complete and up-to-date commentary.

The numbering scheme for the images is explained on the Sample Page. Links will be provided to display each individual photograph. Where there was something interesting on the obverse side, an image was made and this will be shown beside the front image. From a HTML framed image, you can click on the image to view it expanded, or right-click on it to download.

The image files range in size from 40 to 100 kilobytes. On dial-up links, the time it will take to display one image will be on the order of 10-30 seconds, unless the web service is slow. Please be patient. I favoured higher quality over speed, hence the largeish files. For best viewing, I recommend that your screen/desktop be set to at least 800X600 pixels and at least 16-bit colour. 1024X768 and 24-bit colour is better.

Help!

If you have any clues to help in the identification of the people in these pictures, please let me know. Suggestions as to how to make the website better are also welcomed.

Contact

Tom Holden

E-Mail: 2holdenfamily~at~gmail.com (replace ~at~ with @)