This article appeared in the March issue of Family Tree Magazine.

I submitted the image believed to be John Poe and Sarah Threet for the analysis of the author, Maureen Taylor

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William Poe owns a number of identified pictures of his Poe descendants. He actually has a whole illustrated family tree of his ancestors posted online http://www.mindspring.com/~poefamily5/PoeFamilyTree.htm. There’s just one problem picture--this double portrait. He’d like to know more about it.

He knows the double portrait once hung in Alma Poe Walton’s house before his mother owned it. Poe’s mother thinks Alma and Poe’s grandfather identified the pair as William Threet Poe’s (1817-1884) parents, John Poe (1785-1859) and Sarah Threet (1794 - 1861) and that they were his direct descendants.

It’s a confusing portrait. The life dates of the couple and the clothing clues present in this picture don’t add up. Here are the problems:

• It’s a crayon portrait. Photographer’s created these images by printing a light photograph and then artistically enhancing it using charcoal, paints and crayons. The emphasis is on the word enhance. While these pictures were artistic renderings of a photograph the original image could also be updated or improved to remove flaws. Crayon portraits were popular from the 1860s to 1900.
• Given the life dates of the two individuals this charcoal image would have to be a copy of a daguerreotype. [Daguerreotypes date from 1840 to approximately 1860] Photographers could duplicate all types of pictures so it’s possible that this is a copy. If that’s the case then the photographic studio updated the woman’s clothing and hairstyle to reflect fashions at the time it was created.
• Dresses with high puffed sleeves at the shoulder seam, small collars and a pleated bodice date from the early 1890s not the 1850s. In the 1850s women wore wide lace collars and sleeves with fullness on the lower arm. While many women in the 1850s wore their hair over their ears there was some variation.
• The man’s clothing in this picture doesn’t help with dating because the details are not distinctive to any particular decade. While men in the 1890s were usually clean-shaven, it’s not unusual to find older men maintaining a style from an earlier period.

The evidence in this portrait suggests the crayon portrait was created in the 1890s. If the identification is correct then the photographer copied an older photograph and substantially altered the appearance of the woman’s dress to reflect the styles of the 1890s rather than the 1860s.