Turns out the image wasn't in my collection after all! The owner has given permission for me to publish it here. It's a wonderful tableau of a mother and two children dressed in white and covered in white makeup. Enjoy! Thanks to Larry Depetrillo for letting me use it. Philip H. Rose had a studio in Providence, Rhode Island from 1886 to 1910. I wrote a short biographical sketch of him for an as yet unpublished work on Rhode Island photographers.

While I sat at the car dealership waiting for my car to be repaired I saw Martha Stewart's Halloween Show. It was a fantastic assortment of holiday crafts, food and costumes. The show featured Martha as Medusa with living statues in the background. The comedian Serge Dulac was on. It was wonderful to see his collection called the Imaginum. But the moment I saw it I thought, oh no, I've seen something like it before. Somewhere in my collection of images is a portrait of a woman wearing white clothes and makeup looking like a statue. It dates from the 1880s. I'm going to dig around ...

There is a great story on the front page of today's Wall Street Journal. "This Detective Story in Old El Paso is Written in Photos" by Stephanie Simon tells how a librarian named Claudia Rivers is trying to identify the 50,000 unidentified portraits in photographs taken by the Casasola photography studio. It's a great story that won't be online for long. There is an accompanying video but I couldn 't get the link to work.

Next Wednesday night I'm the featured speaker on an Ancestry.com sponsored webinar on preserving family treasures. I hope you'll join me for this event. It's FREE. Register following the link and you'll receive a confirmation of your registration. See you then!

Hilary Clinton, Geraldine Ferraro, Sarah Palin, and Victoria Woodhull. Woodhull?? You might not know that way back in 1872, The Equal Rights Party nominated her for President on May 10, 1872. That's about half a century before women were awarded the right to vote. According to a Wikepedia article on Woodhull, former slave Frederick Douglass was the choice for Vice-President, but he never acknowledged the nod. Born in 1838, Woodhull was an outspoken advocate of sex education, free love, short skirts, and women's rights. For six years (1870-1876) she co-published with her sister ...

I'm back from New York. What a whirlwind visit it was! Here are the two segments from the Today Show of Friday August 29th.