1860s Family Photo Album Tintype Cherokee Ancestry Research lot cdv civil war

  

Original multigenerational family and genealogical archive centered on the Cobb, Pease, Hodson, Hansen, and related family lines. The group includes a 19th-century American Photograph Album containing tintypes, cartes de visite, mounted portraits, and later family photographs. Many of the images are accompanied by handwritten names, relationships, dates, and later genealogical notes identifying parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and family friends. Most, but not every, page of the album is shown in the listing photographs. The album includes extensive family notes regarding reported Cherokee ancestry.

One typed note identifies a woman pictured with her son Albert Cobb as Venita Hansen's believed great-great-grandmother and describes her as Cherokee, while acknowledging that earlier names written on the photograph may have been incorrect. A lengthy handwritten statement addressed "To my family" explains how the photographs were passed down, records information received from older relatives, and attempts to preserve relationships between several generations.

Also included is a small identified tintype of a boy and an adult male with a handwritten family note recording a claimed ancestral connection to relatives who arrived on the Mayflower. The accompanying papers include additional handwritten genealogical research, typed family recollections, correspondence, copied records, a City of Los Angeles marriage document, and a 1976 United States Department of the Interior Bureau of Indian Affairs letter responding to the family's inquiry into possible Cherokee ancestry. The letter states that the submitted family names were not located on the final Cherokee rolls and explains the limitations of those records.

This archive documents the family's own oral history, beliefs, and genealogical research and is not being represented as formal proof of tribal enrollment, citizenship, Cherokee affiliation, or Mayflower descent. Also included is the original box of objects found with the archive, containing assorted small pottery and ceramic vessels, miniature woven baskets, turned wooden containers and implements, carved or handmade objects, stone pieces, and possible worked flint points or tools.

Their ages, makers, origins, and cultural associations are unknown. They have not been professionally authenticated, and no claim is being made that they are archaeological artifacts or documented Cherokee-made objects. They are included because they were found and preserved together with the family material. The album, photographs, papers, and objects show age and storage wear, including fading, staining, foxing, tears, loose material, old tape and adhesive, empty or altered photograph mounts, chips, cracks, losses, and surface dirt.

Some photographs appear to have been removed from the album over time. Everything is being offered together as found and as is, with the listing photographs serving as the best description of the contents and condition.