Throwback Thursday: Lane Family Photo Album
(Cross-referencing this photo album with Orphan School Records)
This week’s Throwback Thursday highlights the Lane family photo album, which donated to Historic Yellow Springs at some point during the past several decades.
The album contains a series of professional photographs from the 1890s that show staff, teachers, and students of the Pennsylvania Commission Soldier’s Orphan School at Yellow Springs (listed in the school systems’ records as Chester Springs).
We cross-referenced the album with records from the Orphan School in our archives and compared the identified staff in the records and with pencil notes written inside, which identify some (though not all) of the people who were photographed.
By identifying the earliest date written on the back of the photos- 1895- we were able to roughly date when we should be looking for, and select the appropriate annual report.
The 1895 Annual Report
That work allowed us to identify several of the people included in the photos and allowed us to verify their roles at the school.
Cross Referencing between the Two
The manager of the school during this time, John Henry Smith, appears in at least portraits in the photo album— first as a younger man, and then seemingly later, as an older man in the 1890s.
A handwritten note in pencil under the photo of Smith as an older man identifies him as the father of the individual who owned the album during its compilation and wrote in several of the names that we have.
The same hand-written notes also identify at least two of the teachers: Mrs. McCandless, who served as the students’ matron, and Miss Dunlap.
The photographs themselves came from several professional studios, including one in Lancaster, PA.
The album includes portraits of people who are identified as Chester Springs Orphan School teachers (but who lack individual names) as well as several groups of students.
Both boys and girls who attended the Chester Springs school during this time are represented in the album, though they are not identified individually.
A few examples are included below.
Note that the boys wear soldier-style uniforms, while the girls’ hair follows the fashions of the 1890s, and it seems that short bangs were in vouge at the time.
There are also several photographs of women identified as teachers from the Chester Springs Orphan School, though their names are not recorded.
An example of one of these photographs is below, which features two women being photographed together.
The Life and Times at Chester Springs Orphan School
It is also of note that Mrs. McCandless appears in what looks like a black mourning dress while she posed for her photo in the role of the schools’ matron.
The matron was a role responsible for maintaining the students and serving as a mother figure within the school.
Interestingly, Mrs. Elaine Moore- who would go on to become the only woman to serve as a principal in the Orphan School system- was a widow herself.
She had also first worked as a matron at Chester Springs before stepping into the role of principal.
The yearly manager’s report from J.H. Smith describes the school as “an undoubted success.”
He reports the school’s accomplishments, successes, and events with personal pride, though he also recorded that two children— Nellie Field and Willie Haas— died of typhoid fever that year.
He seems to have known these children personally, though, as he is able to recount where he suspects Nellie caught typhoid and he describes Willie as a ‘delicate, little’ child.
Headed to the Scotland School
J.H. Smith’s writings further reported sadness that ninety older pupils were transferred to the new industrial school in Scotland, though he surmises that “our loss will be their gain”.
The Soldier’s Orphan School in Scotland, Pennsylvania continued to be operation long after the Chester Springs school closed.
The Scotland school is quite active in living memory, and it is notable that a gentleman that visited Historic Yellow Springs last weekend was an alumni himself.
He recalled his time at the school, and its structure and systems, as “the best thing that ever happened to me”.
Undoubtedly, the people whose faces are preserved in memory in this photo album would have felt a good deal of pride in that fact.
You can also read more about the Soldier’s Orphan School System and the Scotland School here.
What Can We Learn?
Being able to connect names with faces in these photographs lets us see more of the Orphan School community and its daily life.
The work of identifying more of the people in the Lane family album continues, adding depth to the records already preserved in our archives.
There is something indescribably human about photographs, about putting faces and names back together- in the opinion of many, it truly makes the history come back to life.
🏫 📖 📸