Presented to Aaron R. Wheeler by the Scholars of the School of the 1st R.D. Church, Nyack, 1863.

There are 54 cartes de visite and photographs, along with 4 prints of Washington, General Grant and others, and 24 tintypes, some hand tinted. On the back inside cover is the Freemason's Chart.

The album measures 9" x 6" x 2.5" and has red and white printed endpapers, embossed leather covers, the brass remains of a double strap latch, and gold edged album pages.

another victorian family photo album

from an 1839 family bible

From a civil war era family photo album

A mid - late 19th century photo album came into luncheonette library that's filled with a family and its branches from New York, Illinois, and parts beyond.

 Filled with tintypes and cartes de visites, and most of the people identified. Where a person wasn't known, there's a question mark in the same penciled hand.

 My favorite photo. Sisters, I think. Look at the hand resting on the shoulder, the slightly tinted pink cheeks, the tight waists and curly hair.

Luncheonette Library

 Softly, as they say, the door opened. Okay not the door, the shop. Softly the shop opened. The problem is I somehow feel duly bent to read all the books before listing them.

Or stare at the photos, reading stories right into them. I had no idea, when I was 10, that all the postcards and pictures I kept in that Louis Sherry candy box were called ephemera. To me they were lives lived that I had to know about. I was always reporting on make believe.