MOUNT VERNON — Once a month, History Knox features a pair of vintage cabinet card photographs taken in Knox County, which do not have names identifying the people in the pictures.
They were all taken by photographers who had studios in Mount Vernon. Cabinet cards were a popular format for sharing photos in the late 1800s and early 1900s.
The first photograph shows a formally-attired young woman with an ornate brooch or pin on her dark dress. Her pursed lips suggest determination, though there is a mischievous snap to her eyes, too.
The image was taken by the unknown photographer at the Star & Crescent Art Gallery, at 102 W. Gambier St., who was in business briefly during the late 1890s.
The second picture, also from the Star & Crescent Gallery, is amusing. In it a very young man seems to look with exasperation at the photographer.
Since the technical level of the photos we’ve examined in this series argue that the Star & Crescent person was not a technically skilled photographer, perhaps he or she was taking an inordinate amount of time to get the image taken.
Perhaps the slightly bored/annoyed look that the boy holds is the whole reason why this photo was found, over a century later, in a clutch of cabinet cards in Murfreesboro, Tennessee.
I suspect the group of cards were unclaimed or rejected photos that the photographer couldn’t sell but didn’t want to throw away.
If we can identify any of the people we’ve featured in this series, we’ll gladly return the cabinet cards to their families.
