Category: Photo

In her autobiography, Mary Josephine Squire (KWZV-7RH) wrote about often spending time at her grandparents’ house as a child. She was born in their house and often visited their dairy farm, 1 mile east of Spartensburg, Pennsylvania. “To arrive at this farm from Spartensburg, one had to go up over a hill and cross a high iron bridge over a creek. The farm was just on the other side. To me the bridge looked as if it rose about a mile into the sky.”

“The house was 30 or 40 feet from the road, and this front yard had several huge pine trees between two of which was hung a hammock in summer. On hot summer evenings or Sunday afternoons after Church, dinner and chores, one of the men often took a snooze in this hammock. But the rest of the time my brothers and I could enjoy it.”

“Summers were happy times on the farm. We played with the Collie dog, Shep, or with the Gould children who lived a short distance away, picked four leaf clovers from the big field which came clear up to one side of the house, or sometimes went across the field to visit our great grandfather, Joseph Morse Jenkins.”

“It was quite confusing when my playmates spoke of their different grandfathers and grandmothers as I didn’t know anyone had more than one set. My brothers and I only had one set and wondered how come others had more. My father’s father had married my mother’s mother when my parents were in their teens. They grew up together and were brother and sister as well as husband and wife.”

John Jay Squire married his step-sister Laura May Page three and a half years after their parents married each other. But John was 21 years old and Laura was 19 years old when their parents married, so it is not like they grew up in the same house together.

“In December of 1912, at my grandparents wishes, we left the vicinity of Fredonia, New York, and moved to Corry, Pennsylvania, where my grandfather helped my father to get started in the sand, gravel and cement block business. My grandfather purchased a piece of ground with veins of sand and gravel and a half a dosen Irish shanties, the largest of which we tried to make into a home.”

“All of the buildings were in various stages of disrepair. The house was small with four little rooms on the first floor and a room and a half under the eaves. It was so cold that winder that dad banked the house with straw and manure from the barn to keep us from freezing. We often had to wade up to our hips in snow drifts to get to school.”

“Eventually we tore down and replaced or dispensed with all the little outshanties – the little house over the well, the many chicken coops, tool shed, wood shed, and privy. When mother sold the house after dad died in 1947, it was an entirely different looking place with its additions, improvements, shingled exterior, enclosed porches and a nice double garage. In place of the shanties surrounding the house, there were trees, flowers, a rock garden and big lawns.”

Lately I have been researching the family of William Squire (1772-1857, KGVR-8NH), of London, England, who is my 5th great grandfather.  I am currently working through everything I can find out about his children. His second oldest child, Mary Squire (2Z3X-BHD) married Henry Graves (2Z3X-B63) on 6 Jan 1831 in St. James’s Piccadilly Anglican church in London. On each of the census records for the family, Henry’s occupation was listed as publisher of engravings, which I didn’t really understand.  But I could tell the family was well off because they had three to four live-in servants, including a governess, cook, and one or two maids.  Then I found an obituary for Henry that said he was the well-known printseller and the son and grandson of notable London printsellers and the brother of the distinguished line engraver, Robert Graves.

A Google search led me to Wikipedia entries for Henry and Robert Graves and then to the National Portrait Gallery, London website, which has a collection of portraits of Henry, Robert, and their father, also Robert.  It also has a collection of portraits they engraved and published.  

• Portraits of Henry Graves
• Portraits published by Henry Graves
• Portraits of Robert Graves (1798-1873)
• Portraits engraved by Robert Graves (1798-1873)
• Portraits of Robert Graves (d. 1825)
• Portraits by Robert Graves (d. 1825)
• Portraits by R Graves (which probably are by either the father or the son)

Henry Graves started out, at age 16, as an assistant to an art dealer. He later joined another company and was the manager of their print department. When that firm failed in 1825, he and several others acquired the business, with various partnerships until 1844, when Henry became sole proprietor of the firm Henry Graves & Co. The 1871 UK Census notes that Henry had 11 employees.  He also was one of the founders of ‘Art Journal’ and ‘Illustrated London News,’ which began publication in 1842 and was the world’s first illustrated newspaper. Its extensive coverage of the royal family’s tours, lives, and deaths earned the paper popularity.  

Henry Graves and Co., like many commercial art galleries, began as a print publishing business, and gradually moved into the exhibition and sale of paintings and other fine arts.  There are 230 portraits associated with Henry Graves & Co at the National Portrait Gallery, London.  Graves published an immense number of fine engravings from pictures by Turner, Wilkie, Lawrence, Constable, Landseer, Faed, Frith, Grant, Millais, and other contemporary painters. He specially devoted himself to the reproduction of the works of Sir Edwin Landseer, employing the best engravers of the day, and paying the artist himself more than £50,000 for copyrights. He also issued valuable library editions of the works of Reynolds, Lawrence, Gainsborough, Liverseege, and Landseer. 

At a time without photographs, scanners or copy machines, line engravers and printsellers enabled art and images of events to reach a much wider audience.  Henry died in 1892, at the age of 85. Henry’s younger son, Algernon, of whom I have done very little research so far, carried on the business.  However, by the end of Henry’s life, photography was beginning to replace the need for engraved prints.

Robert, Henry’s older brother, pursued the other half of the business, engraving. He became the pupil of John Romney, a line engraver, in 1812, when he was 14 years old. He initially focused on pen and ink facsimiles of rare prints and had much success, according to his biography in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. However, he later decided to devote all his attention to engraving, and he masterfully recreated the works of many artists. A contemporary art critic wrote that his plates (that he engraved) are generally characterized by their refinement and delicacy and in these qualities they can scarcely be surpassed. In 1836 Graves was elected an associate engraver of the Royal Academy and he presented as his diploma work a portrait of Lord Byron from the original by Thomas Phillips. He created many plates to print works by famous artists.  His last was a portrait of Charles Dickens, from the original by William Powell Frith, for a book about novelists.  He died in 1873, at the age of 74.

Among the items I found in my grandfather’s genealogy were two old legal documents.  The first was the final accounts of Frederick Squire (KGVJ-W7B) by his executor and son, Edmund Frederick Squire (KF5Z-Q8X), in 1888.  Frederick’s total assets when he died were valued at just over $3,000, but he had nearly $2,000 in debts and funeral and estate execution expenses, leaving just over $1,100 for his heirs. I found it fascinating to read all the itemized expenses and see how prices have changed.  For example, 2-days rental of horse and buggy cost $4 (that is about $108 in 2019 dollars, adjusted for inflation).  Funeral expenses were $32 (about $863 in 2019 dollars). This document is especially interesting to me because my own grandparents recently died and I have been helping to settle their estate, so it has been interesting to see the process from 1888 and now.  There were a number of fees for proving the will, hiring a lawyer, taking testimony, and filing the accounts, so it is clearly at least as expensive and a hassle then as it is now.

Frederick’s will stated that his wife, Ann, would get $400 on the sale of his estate and $100 every year thereafter for the remainder of her life. The final accounting shows $300 going to Ann Squire as the “widow’s exemption.”  I don’t know why it is less than the $400 in the will.  She did get paid for two other items on the expense list, “asst. of devise” and “different times,” but I have no idea that these mean.

Frederick’s will is available on Ancestry.com in the Pennsylvania Wills and Probate Records collection, and it provided a treasure trove of genealogical information.  I also transcribed the will and uploaded it on Ancestry and FamilySearch.org.  The scanned copy of the final accounts is also on FamilySearch.

The other document I found was a land sale agreement between Edmund Frederick Squire and his son, John Jay Squire (L439-D3P), in 1913, wherein Edmund sold a plot of his land in Corry, Pennsylvania to his son for $800 plus interest, payable $100 per year. The document contains a description of the land, totaling three acres, and bordering on Marion St.  This document and it’s transcription are available on FamilySearch.org as well.

I did a little searching and found roughly where the land was, on the east side, near the end, of Marion St.

1876 map of land plots in Corry, PA.  The red star is my best guess of about where Edmund’s land was.  By 1913 that plot belonging to H. D. Francis had been broken into smaller plots, some of which probably still belonged to the same family because land belonging to Francis is listed as a border to Edmund’s land.

This is what the area looks like today.  Marion St. seems to have gotten shorter with time.  On the 1920 U.S. Census, John Jay Squire’s address is listed as 720 Marion St, with other houses on Mound St listed next to him.  Google Maps puts 720 Marion St in the middle of a field today, though it looks like there might be the foundation of a building there.