Dick Cornwell of Rochester NY
Oftentimes, the problem with trying to identify a particular subject is that you will find too many possible matches. Or you may find none at all. In one sense, this example suites both situations.
This image is inscribed ‘Dick Cornwell, Feb 1862. Rochester, NY’ and bears the photographer’s imprint Powelson, 58 State Street & 302 Main Street, Buffalo, NY.
We have no reason to doubt the 1862 date, as the image is a small vignette, and the card has the double gilt or brown lines around the border typical of that era. Also, the photographer is Powelson — that would be Benjamin F Powelson, who was in business in Buffalo from 1848 to the 1860s, and also had a gallery in Rochester after 1861.
So, our first question is why does someone from Rochester have their picture taken in Buffalo? There are many possible reasons why he may have, but with this photographer, there is also the possibility that he didn’t — the same photographer had a studio in Rochester, he may have used the Buffalo imprinted cards because he ran out (or had not yet ordered) cards imprinted for Rochester. Our research shows the Rochester studio was opened in 1861 — if it was late in the year they may not have received their printed cardstock by February 1862.
It would also help our case if we could determine how old the gentleman is. To me, he looks about 18 to 22 years old, though I have no accurate means of gauging ages. There is just a hint of receding hairline, or that could be a false-impression caused by the lock of hair dipping onto his high forehead. Or perhaps he is the sort who will go prematurely bald.
The next obvious step is to search the census records for a Dick or Richard Cornwell living in Rochester NY in the 1860 census, which is the nearest we have to the actual date. He should be about 16 to 20 years old at the time of the census.
We find just five Cornwell’s in Rochester that year: Peter and Mary with their 16 year old son Francis M; 70 year old Phebe Cornwell living in the Osborn household; and 29 year old Eliza Cornwell, a domestic in the Appleby family. Nothing even close to our target. He may have moved there after 1860, or the fact that the surname occurs in town means he may have been visiting relatives.
Given his apparent age, Mr Cornwell may have been in Rochester to attend the University of Rochester, which was established in 1850. Unfortunately, that university does not provide public access to it’s alumni list — obviously recent records need some limits to protect privacy, but why records over 100 years old are ‘protected’ is beyond my ken.
So we return to the census records, and see if we can find any Richard Cornwell’s of the appropriate age in other places. This is where we run into the problem of too many possible matches. If we limit the search to Richard Cornwell’s born between 1840 and 1843, we find three possibilities in New York state, none of them anywhere near Rochester.
Curiously, if we expand the search to other states, there are no other Richard Cornwell’s listed in that age range. If we use his nickname, there is only one Dick Cornwell aged 16 to 20 — 18 years old and living in Port Huron, Michigan, working as a clerk for the grocer Theodore Tucker.
So we have four candidates for the subject of this photographer, without any really good reason to choose one over the others. And there is always the chance that he is not among these choices, since a large fraction of census records have names that are recorded wrong or indexed wrong.
If this were found among photos belonging to a particular family, we would have additional clues to search for — but once an image gets assigned to the junk-heap of eBay, such valuable provenance is lost.