Unidentified Newlyweds, But I Have a Theory

For Valentine's Day, here's a lovely photo of two unidentified newlyweds.


(Click on image to enlarge)
Image courtesy of Eldon Harms.

It comes from Minnie Rossow Harms' steamer trunk, which narrows the circle of possibilities.

I think the young man looks like Henry Harms, Jr. That would make the young lady the former Miss Grace Cook.

Here's an identified photo of Henry Jr. and another young woman (named Lena Clark):


(Click on image to enlarge)
Image courtesy of Eldon Harms.

Cute, huh? "To Reno," because Reno, Nevada was known as a place where you could get divorced relatively quickly? — not very romantic. But you could get remarried the same day, apparently.

However, the point of the photo is: the Reno-bound Henry Jr. looks to me like the unidentified young husband above.


Although the newlyweds are not identified, their photographer is. He was T.E. Wood, of 6250 Wentworth, Chicago, Illinois. We know that Henry Jr. and Grace were married January 8, 1916; was Mr. Wood working as a photographer then? The 1910 Census shows Thomas E. Wood, at age 70, carrying on his profession while living at 6250 Wentworth. A 1911 Chicago directory, while advertising his photography business, also gives us his middle name: Evert.


(Click on image to enlarge)
From The Lakeside Annual Directory of the City of Chicago 1911 (Chicago: The Chicago Directory Company, 1911), https://archive.org/details/lakesideannualdi1911unse/page/n3/mode/2up.

Mr. Wood died May 22, 1918. His brief death notice in the Chicago Tribune of May 23 doesn't say whether he was photographing to the end.

Chicago directories between 1911 and 1918 are remarkably scarce online, so I can't prove T.E. Wood was still working as a photographer in 1916. However, he seems to have been devoted to his art, and it's not unreasonable for a man of some 76 years of age to photograph a nice, orderly event like a wedding. I hereby pronounce my theory plausible.