The Gift of Time

The 1908 Wellington High School football team. Image measures 6 3/4″ L x 4 3/4″ W, mounted to black backing board.

I know, I know. In my recent fifth anniversary commemoration I cautioned that I would not be making as many blog entries moving forward. Yet here I am, with my third post in as many weeks. But I simply had to share this with all of you. This week, I received in the mail an enormous box of history. Descendants of the Vischer and Tripp families, who now live outside of Ohio, decided that some of their family keepsakes needed to come home to Wellington. The package was an absolute treasure trove of books, photographs and small objects. Many items pertain directly to the Tripp and Vischer families in the early twentieth century, and so are outside the immediate scope of my historical knowledge. But the images are so wonderful and unique that I include them here regardless.

Undated image of “Vischer family & horses back of 210 South Main.” Image measures 3 1/2″ L x 4 1/2″ W, mounted to tan backing board.

William Bentley Vischer (1863-1948) owned a piano and organ store on the south side of Liberty Street, what we now call West Herrick Avenue. The ghostly remnants of his painted advertisement are still visible on the west side of the mansard roof. William was married to Carrie Anne Tripp Vischer (1861-1940). Carrie’s father was well-known carriage manufacturer and early Wellington mayor Edward S. Tripp. But she is known in her own right as the author of “History of Wellington,” delivered as a public address and later printed as a special insert in the Wellington Enterprise in 1922.

Carrie Ann Tripp Vischer. Oval portrait measures 3 1/2″ L x 2 1/2″ W, mounted to black backing board.

Some of the most wonderful objects in the collection are five ferrotypes, also known as tintypes. Ferrotypes are a kind of photographic image created without the use of a negative. A thin sheet of metal was coated with a chemical emulsion layer, and an image was then exposed directly onto the metal. All of these examples have rough, uneven edges and no cases. Two are inscribed that they were taken at the “Wellington Fair,” and given their overall similarities, I have to wonder if all five were.

Undated ferrotype etched on reverse, “Carrie T. Vischer | W. B. Vischer | Wellington Fair.” Object measures approximately 5″ L x 7″ W.

Undated, unidentified ferrotype, possibly taken at the Wellington Fair. Object measures approximately 2 1/2″ L x 3 1/2″ W.

Ferrotype enclosed in paper sleeve. Marked “Mary Vischer & Margarete Hall abt 1909. Wellington Fair.” Object measures approximately 3 1/2″ L x 2 1/2″ W.

Undated ferrotype etched on reverse, “Geo. Foot & Cet.” Object measures approximately 4″ L x 2″ W.

Undated, unidentified ferrotype. Object measures approximately 2 1/4″ L x 1 3/4″ W.

The next object is also metal, though not a photograph. I have never seen anything like it. It is a small metal card, in a paper envelope addressed to “Mr. and Mrs. S. D. Terry.” Sidney D. Terry (1849-1922) and his wife, Mary E. Terry (1849-1940) are buried in Greenwood Cemetery. The card itself is a metal invitation to a party, a tenth wedding anniversary party to be precise. The tenth is the “tin” anniversary in popular tradition, and the metal card fits that theme. Though the reflective metal is difficult to scan or photograph, it reads: “1868. 1878. Mr. & Mrs. F. W. Bennett, Request Your Presence At the Tenth Anniversary of their Wedding, Friday, October 4, 1878, at Eight O’Clock.”

Metal party invitation, 1878. Object measures 3″ L x 5″ W.

These last two images are both of children. One is a photograph of Sadie Vischer by William Sawtell, the other an unidentified toddler taken by someone called Saunders. I find them both unusual–and terribly sweet. Sadie Vischer has a lovely dog in her image, which must have been very well behaved to sit perfectly still for the exposure time of the portrait. The toddler (possibly named George) is digging into a waste paper basket and surrounded by a floor of crumpled sheets, a perfectly ordinary daily scene that I have never seen reproduced in a nineteenth-century photograph.

Undated William Sawtell photograph of “Sadie Vischer” and her dog. Object measures 6 1/2″ L x 4 1/4″ W.

Undated image by Saunders of Wellington. Inscribed on reverse, “From George to Moma.” Object measures 6 1/2″ L x 4 1/4″ W.

I am so grateful to the family custodians who have preserved these marvelous glimpses into the past. I hope you have enjoyed looking at them as much as I have. I will be donating the materials to the local history collection of the Herrick Memorial Library, so that the family’s generosity may be shared by all.

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