The Girl in an Abandoned House

She was photographed in Chicago, probably sometime in the first decade of the 20th century, but she meant something to someone in Hobart, where this photo ended up …


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

… but then again, she meant nothing to someone in Hobart, where this photo was left in an abandoned house, and found by Eldon Harms, whose employer had sent him to shut off the gas in that house so it could be demolished.

I can't date the photograph with any precision. Her blouse and the bow in her hair could date to anytime between the turn of the 20th century and World War I. The photographers, Fein & Schnabel, were in business at that address for over a decade: Chicago Photographers 1847 through 1900 shows them starting out in 1897, and a 1910 Chicago directory records them still working together at that same address.[1]

She wears a heart-shaped locket, just like Baby Les.

I don't suppose I'll ever know who she was.

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[1] The following year Jacob Fein, photographer, is listed at that address without reference to Schnabel, but that might not mean anything.