Old Photographs Saved From Trash Can ~ #9 Florence ROYALTY (1868-1946)

This is a spin-off of my 52 Ancestors: #14 Albert Spencer LILLIE (1848-1913) ~ Old Photographs Saved From Trash Can blogpost in which I featured a few photos from a collection of old photographs my 4C1R Joe Rooney shared with me. I asked Joe about using the photos and he kindly wrote, “Please use them at your will.  I feel it is keeping it in the family and don’t need credit.  If anything, I appreciate your evaluations, identifications and detective work.  I’m hopeful you and yours enjoy them.  On a blog, in a book, above a cloud.”

Please contact me!
Are you related to a person mentioned in this post? Send an email to
openingdoorsinbrickwalls @ pt.lu or message me on my Facebook page
Opening Doors in Brick Walls.

Links to previous posts in this series may be found in Old Photographs

#9 Florence ROYALTY (1868-1946)

With tomorrow being Mother’s Day these photos of Joe Rooney’s grandmother Florence ROYALTY are a natural choice for today’s post. The wife of Isaac Spencer LILLIE, Florence was the original owner of the collection of old photographs being featured in this series.

Florence was not quite 3 years old when her mother died and 6 years old when her father remarried. She was quite close to her ROYALTY family as well as her stepmother’s PADDOCK family as will be seen by the photographs to be featured in later posts in this series.

This tintype of young Florence was taken when she was about 5 or 6 years old (ca. 1874). Does she look angry or upset about something or was the look caused by her having to be still for her portrait?

This late 1890s or early 1900s strip was included in the previous post. It shows what a beautiful woman Florence was in her thirties. Florence, alone, with her second son Roy, and with her husband Isaac.

Even as she grew older she was elegant and lovely. They didn’t photoshop pictures in the 1920s, did they?

Florence with her daughters Ruth (left, b. 1907) and Ruby (right, b. 1909) in the mid- to late ’20s. The Victorian fashion era was over. Mid-calf hemlines, as Florence is wearing, came in fashion in the late 1910s and stayed until about 1922. It was only in the early second half of the 1920s that the shorter hemlines came in fashion. Waistlines were dropping from the bustline in Victorian times to the natural waistline to the hips as seen here.

Sticking with the Mother’s Day theme, both of Florence’s daughters were named after their grandmothers: Ruth Joanna for her maternal grandmother Joanna PALMER (1833-1871) and Ruby Pernecia for her paternal grandmother Pernecia Elizabeth GLASS (1852-1899).

The back of the next photograph identifies the persons and the year it was taken:

This photograph, taken in 1930 of Florence with her husband Isaac, who died in 1932, was likely the last of them together. They are standing in the doorway of their home at 2120 Marantette in Detroit, Michigan. The address was also seen on the 1930 and 1940 census for the household Florence was living in.

Happy Mother’s Day Flo!

Joe Rooney kindly gave me permission to use these photographs on my blog.

Joe ROONEY wrote on 15 February 2015: This collection of photographs was scanned at 300 dpi color by me. The original photos were sent by Sandra Lillie about ten years ago after she found them cleaning out a relative’s garage in Southern Illinois, finding no other takers (suckers). She believes they were a collection by L Vance Lillie. Many of the pictures seemed to be removed from frames or were in albums evidenced by fading characteristics and may have been from other’s collections. I scanned the reverse if there was laboratory advertising or writing. Some of the authors’ identification may be figured out of the handwriting matches. I did not scan the reverse of photos where there was only a three digit number that I believe to be sequence numbers on a roll of film. I didn’t spot any obvious helpful commonalities.

© 2015 Cathy Meder-Dempsey

Save