Historic Hood River
Anna Post Crosby
12-1-2016
Notes
We have a small album which apparently belonged to Anna Post Crosby. She was born in 1868, so I would guess this tintype was taken in the 1880s. She’s probably posing with two of her younger siblings. She was born in Corvallis and died in Odell in 1920. Can anyone fill in some details of her life?
This is an unusually good tintype. Most tintypes look very muddy as their tones vary from gray to black. Tintypes don’t do white very well.
Charlott
Actually her first name was Anna. Her siblings shown here are Ida and Frank. She came from somewhat of a historic pioneer family. Her father, Wallace Post was a very early pioneer down around Prineville where he had a sizeable ranch. On her mother’s side, her Grandfather Herbert, had the first flour mill just south of Oregon City.
L.E.
Here is a test for you nels.
Charlott mentions Anna in photo #652
https://www.hoodriverhistorymuseum.org?showimage=652
Arthur
Thanks for the correction Charlott. I’ll correct the text to read "Anna" instead of "Anne". There is also a note presumably by a niece calling her as "Aunt Annie".
L.E.
In some genealogy, she is listed as Annie Marilee, married to John R. Crosby.
They have a son Don who in 1912 has returned home to Odell after spending three years in the Philippines with the U.S. Army. He dies in 1918, perhaps from an accident involving ship building.
They have a daughter Gertrude who married Harry Caughey and a daughter Gladys who married Charles Hamilton.
I list these names because if someone is searching for family information, HHR might show up on google and then the family can add more info here.
In the May 14 1908 HR Glacier, John Crosby is an agent for selling Self Operating Automatic Fire Escapes. "All you do is to jump out the window. The machine does the rest."
It looks to me like you can either jump out the window, or jump out hanging onto this thing and hope the cogs catch.
https://www.newspapers.com/image/96249480/
There is a lot of information here about the Wallace and Lucy Post family, parents of Anna. Definitely Oregon pioneers.
http://findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=31534413
L.E.
Is there a wedding band on her hand?
Kyle
Just a photographic comment: The large plate size on that camera had the unfortunate side effect of making the distance in focus ("depth of field") very narrow, even with middle apertures. So unless you had a TON of light, and thus could shrink down your aperture to a tiny size, then you had no choice but to open up the aperture more and try to focus carefully. In this image, you can see that Anna’s hands are nice a crisp, but by the time we go back even 12 inches to her face, we’ve already lost a good bit of focus detail. With large (LARGE) format cameras like this, you often had to choose which slice of your subject you’d like to have in focus and give up on the rest. The answers is usually the face, which makes me think this was operator error on the photographer’s part. That, or the camera got moved back a foot after focus was set and he/she didn’t correct for it.
L.E.
I suspect we might want to re-think who the subjects are in this photo. According to 1880 census parents Wallace is 32, wife Lucy 29, Annie is 11, Ida is 9, Frank is 7, Emma 5, Wm 2 and Fred 5 months.
Arthur
Thanks for the technical detail, Kyle. I looked at the high-res scan and the effect you describe is quite pronounced. The focus on the faces is pretty poor, with only her fingers really in focus.
Given my post yesterday I’m willing to entertain the thought I might be wrong and this might not be Anna Crosby. This photo has no label. Photo https://www.hoodriverhistorymuseum.org?showimage=690 clearly identifies Anna Crosby as the woman on the right, and she does not look like this woman. This photo appears in an album from by Anna Post Crosby (written in several places), and there is another photo of her a bit older, labeled "Aunt Annie" on the reverse with a year of 1900. Did Anna Crosby have an Aunt Annie? Whoever this is, there are several pictures of her in Anna Crosby’s album.
Trying to trace this family I see Anna Crosby’s mother had a brother 61 years younger than herself. How does that work???
Stever
Speaking of fingers – what’s that on the boys right hand ?
Kyle
Oh yeah – he’s got a bandage!