Historic Hood River
Edgar Franz, For Sure! And a New Mystery
Notes
I’ve made some guesses before identifying Edgar and Earl Franz, sons of E. A. Franz. This one is reliable, since it bears a typed caption from Joe D. Thomison, editor of The Hood River Glacier. The caption states:
Edgar Franz, whose wedding occurred Thursday morning, October 14. Please return to Joe D. Thomison, Hood River, Ore.
There is a pencil note “1 col same size” and a rubber stamp “SUNDAY LAYOUT”.
So what do you think: We can be pretty sure this is Edgar Franz, but is he one of the boys in this earlier post? Or how about this one?
Our collection is full of images with similar notes and stamps by Joe D. Thomison, but I have never been able to figure out where he was publishing them. The Hood River Glacier only published on Thursdays, and images were very rare. Here is their coverage of the Franz- Thomson wedding, with no images. So what’s going on here? My best guess is Thomison was sending images to a newspaper which ran a Sunday pictorial edition, like The Sunday Oregonian, for possible inclusion in their pages. I don’t see this image in their issues for any of the Sundays in October, 1915, but perhaps this wasn’t interesting enough, or maybe this was for another newspaper, like The Dalles Weekly Chronicle? Sadly those are not online, so a trip to the library and some time with microfilm may be required. But at least we know what Edgar Franz looked like.
L. E.
Well that search wasn’t much fun. Yes J.D. Thomison, editor of the Glacier, contributed news articles to other newspapers but I didn’t find any photos.
I found that his wife died at age 31 during childbirth, leaving 5 children.
And Edgar Franz died at age 37 from pneumonia.