Series III: Trappan Gift: Other Materials

This subseries incorporates ephemera belonging to Bracklow and material related to Bracklow accumulated by Ruth Trappan. Bracklow material includes unused boards for a planned Marblehead album, Bracklow's notes of titles in negative boxes (these are loose, as compared to those laid in to the 1903 datebook in Subseries III.2), a map of Long Island, a postcard of Marblehead, MA, and several envelopes with Bracklow's stamp on them. Other material consists of a folder of 7 pictures and cabinet cards of Mary Granger (two are taken by Bracklow), Ruth Trappan's copy of Mary Black's Old New York in Early Photographs 1853-1901 (New York: Dover, 1973), and typed captions describing Bracklow photos from a planned exhibit by Ruth Trappan.

This subseries includes two logbooks, one kept by Bracklow and one created by John Judson Trappan, Ruth Trappan's father. The Bracklow logbook is a commercially published datebook for 1903 (perhaps of a kind sold by Bracklow in his stationery store) in which he has recorded the titles of negatives in a number of negative boxes. Bracklow ignored the datebook's printed dates and instead wrote about eight titles per page. This book also contains several loose pieces of paper, which seem to have once accompanied negative boxes, on which photograph titles are also recorded. The other logbook is a composition book in which John Trappan recorded the subjects of the photographs in Bracklow's albums. A photograph of Bracklow is pasted to the front. It is unclear why Trappan undertook this project, but the book, which is in good condition, provides a quick reference to the albums.

Some of these prints have Bracklow's notation along the bottom. Most are undated. Trappan grouped the photos by city or state, and this arrangement has been kept as much as possible. Trappan also wrote on the back of some of these prints, and in this case signed her notations "R.T." Many of these scenes are from the same trips documented in the photo albums, such as Fort Lee and Somerset, N.J., and New Rochelle, N.Y. Others are from towns either not well represented, or otherwise unrepresented, in the albums and Alland's prints, such as Bridgehampton, N.Y., Sag Harbor, N.Y., and Boston, MA. Three of these prints are cyanotypes. Several landscapes, of an unidentified location, show intense light contrast. The two still lifes in this subseries (in box 33, under the heading "Other") appear to be the only studio shots in the collection. Prints are organized by size, by state and city, when known, and then by subject.