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I scanned this one in color to show how someone has tried to hand-tint the cloth draped over the table she's leaning on.
Abbie was born in 1855, as we know, and in this photo she appears perhaps five years old, which would date the photo to about 1860. She is wearing an off-the-shoulder dress, a style popular for children from the 1840s through mid-1860s. Her short hair is not all that unusual for the era.
She was just "Abby Shedd" when someone wrote her name inside the photographer's imprint on the back …
… but someone has written her full married name below the photo in the album:
Likewise on the other photo:
By now she is a young lady, perhaps in her late teens or early twenties.
That would place the photo around 1875. The style of her clothing is consistent with that timeframe.
This photo was also taken in Valparaiso.
Both of Abbie's photographers are discussed in Steve Shook's blog.
I believe Abbie grew up in the home of her grandparents, John and Hannah Wood; that is where we find her in the censuses of 1860 through 1880. After Hannah's death in 1873, Abbie kept house for her grandfather. In 1882, she married Edwin Rice of Valparaiso. They had two daughters (that I have been able to find out about, and that was not easy).
Abbie was only 45 when she died on December 1, 1900. She is buried in the Woodvale Cemetery.
Her husband, Edwin, died in Chicago in 1910. His body was brought to Deep River for burial beside Abbie.
This death notice says that at one time he traveled to Central America with his wife's half-brother, William Joshua Shedd:
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"Whiting and Environs," Lake County Times (Hammond, Ind.), 5 Oct. 1910.
Their daughter, Georgia, died young. It is from this death notice that I first hear of her sister, Mary.
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Porter County Vidette (Valparaiso, Ind.), 16 May 1917.
I have not been able to find out anything at all about sister Mary.
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