As I learn about lantern slides and how to preserve them, I came across this delightful little movie. Take a few minutes and enjoy. While the collection I am cataloging are black and white travel photos from about 1915 to 1930 taken by the family, having a working “magic lantern” opens all kinds of avenues to explore. This is really the beginning of film as we know it today.
It took nearly fifty years, the invention of the Internet and social media plus three Alex’s and two librarians for the most surprising event to occur.
As a result, I am in the possession of hundreds of lantern slides along with the projector that belonged to my great grandmother Lily Von Schmidt Mitchell Tilden.
It is a complicated story and we are just now filling in the blanks. It started shortly after we rebooted this blog. I got a note through the contact form that said:
I believe my boyfriend and I have a journal written by your grandmother, Alexine Michell, during World War I with a set of glass lantern slides from the same time. There are also glass slides from a trip around the world that Alexine took, perhaps in the early 1920’s. We’d love to share these items with you.
This is the kind of serendipity genealogists and social historians dream of.
Jackie, who wrote this note, is a librarian. Vicki, my partner in crime, is a retired librarian. Thus the two librarians.
Jackie’s boyfriend is named Alex. I am Alexa and my grandmother was Alexine. Thus the three Alex’s.
Norma, Alex’s mother, bought these slides at auction in the sixties. Alex enjoyed looking at them growing up. Fifteen or twenty years ago they showed them to Jackie. She kept them in mind, determined to help the collection find their way back to the family of origin. Then on Sunday, two weeks ago, Jackie searches again for Alexine Mitchell and finds this site.
Norma writes:
Alex told you about my finding the slides/journal at an auction preview. I was struck with the conviction that I had to have the lot. We bid on it and since there were very few [none?] other bids, we won the lot. I did not know anything about the contents or the names or why this happened to me. This must have been @50 years ago. I have never understood what this matter was about.
Over the years my husband and I talked about donating everything to a local museum or historical society but I could never decide to actually do it. Just had to keep all. This has never happened to me before and has never happened since.
Now the mystery is resolved and I have closure and a peace about it. Alexine and Marion and the family are going home. I am sooo happy that you want them.
When my great-aunt Marion died in 1966, she left me the family photo albums and diaries. Apparently, some of the household items were auctioned off when the Tilden family home was sold.
It has taken nearly 50 years but the lantern slides, some from the Great War, and others from round the world trips taken by the family in the 1920s are back with the rest of the family archive.
The projector works. The slides need to be catalogued and digitized. It will take some time. As we make discoveries we will share them here.
Next year, as we build interest in Marion’s book, we hope to do slide shows using the old projector and the original lantern slides.
As I told Alex when he gave me the slides, I feel like I have found lost family. We will be forever grateful to Norma, her husband Leonard Gilbert, MD, Anthony, Alex and Jackie for their tenacity, perseverance, and generosity. Thank you!
Did you know? 100 years ago today (December 8, 1915) this poem was published in an English publication called Punch, anonymously. The poem was so well received in Europe as well as the US, the poet was revealed and the poem became one of the most popular poems ever written. The author, John McCrae, was an army field doctor, who wrote the poem during the Second Battle of Ypres in 1915 while tending to the wounded and burying the dead. It captures the anguish of the tragic consequences of war. He died in 1918 of pneumonia and meningitis. He was 46.
In Flanders’ fields the poppies blow,
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky,
The larks still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Shorts days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and Now we lie
In Flanders’ fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe;
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch, be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die,
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders’ Fields.
Carrier pigeons played a valuable role during WWI for carrying messages between units and troops in battle. The most famous, Cher Ami, was a Black Check cock carrier pigeon, one of 600 pigeons owned and flown by the U.S. Army Signal Corps in France. She saved the lives of 194 American soldiers (the “Lost Battalion” of the 77th division) by carrying a message across enemy lines on October 4, 1918. Cher Ami was shot in the chest and leg, blinded in one eye, losing most of the leg to which the message was attached, but continued the 25-mile flight avoiding shrapnel and poison gas to get the message home. Cher Ami was awarded the French Croix de Guerre with Palm for heroic service. She later died from the wounds received in battle and was enshrined in the Smithsonian Museum (Museum of American History) in Washington, DC.
Alexa and I have spent the past year organizing, cataloging, archiving and preserving all the memorabilia from the Mitchell sister’s travels and adventures. Our process has made for our very own adventure as we learn how to preserve 100+ year old documents, clippings and photographs. As time and money allows we are taking apart albums to scan the contents and store these treasures in acid-free sleeves and albums. We have much to do, but are happy with the progress we have made so far.