Death Mask 1880

Mourning Portrait ~ Claudia Severine Groth and Millie Cecelia Groth

Mourning Portrait ~ Claudia Severine Groth and Millie Cecelia Groth

An authentic postcard showing two sisters laid out in matching coffins.

An inked inscription verso in a fine period hand identifies the girls as:

Claudia Severine Groth ~ Born Sept. 30, 1908 and Died Feb. 20, 1911 and
Millie Cecelia  ~ Born Dec. 25, 1910 and Died Feb. 21, 1911

George Lee Mills ~ Victorian Memorial Card

Memorial Card for George Lee Mills

Jeanette Glackmeyer

Inscription reads:

Miss Jeanette Glackmeyer, daughter whose above photo was taken 9 days after death. Mother could not part with only daughter.

Edgar Allan Poe (1927)

An account by Hervey Allen, August 1927:

[Poe] traveled by steamer to Baltimore and arrived there on September twentyninth. Exactly what happened to him in that city cannot now be ascertained. An election was in progress, and the preponderance of evidence points to the fact that he began to drink and fell into the hands of a gang of repeaters who probably gave him drugged liquor and voted him. On October third he was found by Dr. James E. Snodgrass, an old friend, in a, horrible condition at a low tavern in Lombard Street. Summoning a relative of Poe, Dr. Snodgrass had the now unconscious and dying poet taken in a carriage to the Washington Hospital and put into the care of Dr. J. J. Moran, the resident physician. Several days of delirium ensued with only a few intervals of partial consciousness. He called repeatedly for one "Reynolds," and gave vent to every indication of utter despair. Finally on Sunday morning, October 7, 1849, "He became quiet and seemed to rest for a short time. Then, gently, moving his head, he said, 'Lord help my poor soul.'" As he had lived so he died--in great misery and tragedy. 
 
Poe is buried in the Old Western Burial Ground in Baltimore, Maryland. Every January 19, Poe's birthday, for more than fifty years a man dressed in black and fedora has left cognac accompanied by three red roses on Poe's grave.

Della Powell (1894)

Inscription Reads:

Mrs Della Powell. Mother died 1894
of Mrs Lillie Powell. Mother died July 10, 1935
of Mrs Hazel Lyden Henderson   The 1880 census shows a Della Powell living in Friendship, Crockett County, Tennessee, close to the Arkansas border. Born in 1840, at the time of the census she was working on a farm. She was unmarried, but she had at least 6 children, including Lillie, born in 1876. Della was born in Tennessee, as were her parents before her.

Photographed by Carroll of Walnut Ridge, Arkansas, identified by a blindstamp on the mount.