In an album of photos from 1917, put together by Alice Leeuwenhoek, are crowd photos that somehow involve WWI.
The following is a sample of what the album looks like when you open it up. Most of the photos are of Alice and her family, like these first ones.
The war photos were taken in Kalamazoo. You can see the Humphrey Company building in a couple of them. According to the 1905 and 1926 Kalamazoo City Directories, Humphrey Company, a gas company, was located at 501-515 N. Rose Street, Kalamazoo, Michigan. Like a lot of businesses at that time period, it was located on the “north side,” which became an almost exclusively African-American area by the time I was a kid.
Downtown Kalamazoo is not that big, and only a few streets over is the main street, West Michigan Avenue.
So tell me: what do you think is going on in these photos? I think it’s exciting to see the density of the crowd. There are soldiers leaning out of the windows. Are they being seen off to war by the people of Kalamazoo?
The details of hats and the white/black contrast of female/male attire is fascinating.
Notice in the above photo two people standing on an elevated surface. The man on our left has his arm around the other person’s shoulders. I imagine they are saying goodbye to a loved one.
These are photos with the Humphrey Company in the background.
As to the photographer of these photos, I suspect they were taken by Joseph DeKorn, Alice’s uncle, because she is the subject of so many of her photos. Also, Joseph was the family photographer of the time period. The question is, if Alice was not a photographer herself, why did she own so many albums?
I don’t know the answer to that question.
Always we have so many questions but where to go for answers?
Sometimes there are no answers left. The answers are hidden in the gaps between documentation and memory.
Frustrating, eh?
That is for sure!
Fascinating photos, what huge crowds! You really get a sense of the occasion. Tragic really to see all those wagons being shipped off.. the poor horses who would have had to pull them on the battlefields. I wonder how many of those men came back? I’ve no idea about American casualties in WW1.
That’s what I want to find out: how many survived. I’ve heard that Kalamazoo’s Colonel Westnedge was credited with saving the lives of many of his men, but you have me really curious about how many from Kalamazoo died. Just went and found this: http://genealogytrails.com/mich/militarygreatwar.html At least 27 men from Kalamazoo died in battle, not counting the men from small towns that really are part of Kalamazoo County and then Battle Creek which is really close, too. Then many more from disease. I started tearing up as I was counting. Col. Westnedge was a casualty of disease from the war.
Janice Brown’s blog Cow Hampshire chronicles the men and women of New Hampshire who died in WWI. Just scrolling through the posts gives a good sense of how many lives were lost from this small state: http://www.cowhampshireblog.com/new-hampshires-world-war-one-history/
I love Janice’s blog! Thank you for posting this!
You’re welcome, Luanne!
I’d say that’s exactly the occasion. I have one of a similar scene in Moscow, Idaho. Not quite so large a crowd, though.
Who took your photo?
I did it today with a tripod and timer.
Very pretty!
Thanks!
What absolutely great photos! They truly give the feeling that you could step into the photo and be part of that huge crowd.
I agree! I would love to be transported there for 15 minutes. Wouldn’t that be something?!
Awesome photos Luanne – they really capture our history. I agree they may have been seeing them off. 🙂
I can’t imagine a crowd like that today except to go to a 1) sports game, 2) concert, or 3)traffic (hahaha).
ha ha ha (traffic)
And ick.
Such big crowds. It seems more likely they were saying goodbye than greeting returning soldiers. No one seems to be smiling. No big hands waving in the air.
I love all the hats! It’s hard to believe that at one time most people wore hats when they left the house. Now it’s only in the bittercold or to keep the sun off our faces.
Good point about expressions and gestures!
I love the hats, too! They are all so cool! I even have a Pinterest board with vintage and antique hats ;).
Wonderful photos and interesting post. I think that she was the organizer of the family, the one who kept the photos everyone else took. Just like there are some in the family today who do scrap booking or genealogy while other play golf or go to the casino’s; she just liked to put together photo albums.
I expect you are right about Alice. Because I don’t think Joe, the photographer, did that sort of organization. He probably relied on his niece Alice!
Wonderful photos Luanne. I tend to agree with the others— a send-off rather than a welcome home, especially if they were taken in 1917!
And I’d say Alice was probably the family’s memory-keeper to have amassed the albums.
I agree about Alice. You are pretty much agreeing with Jose, too. She had my job hahahaha.
What a treasure
I think so, too!
That is definitely a send-off scene. I think Dad has his arm around Younger Brother’s shoulder, as Big Brother goes off to fight in the Great War. Such a tragedy, such a waste of young lives. My Mum’s dad served in WWI, and I have a studio picture of him. One of her young friends thought it was a picture of Nelson Eddy! (We go back a way, don’t we?)
That’s what I was thinking about the Dad and younger brother!!!!! He’s holding onto the young one as long as he can!!!! A horrific tragedy. he must have been handsome then!!!
I just read, on another site, that the French lost more men in WWI *alone* than America has lost in all of the wars we’ve ever fought. France lost an estimated 1,360,000 soldiers, while American has lost approximately 1,350,000 since the Revolution. Hard to believe, isn’t it?
Oh my gosh! And those were casualties? illness and accidents or just casualties? Just awful.
Given the state of medical care up until WWII, illness and casualties are pretty much one and the same. When you figure penicillin wasn’t developed until 1942, just about anything could develop into a fatal infection. President Coolidge’s son died in 1924 of blood poisoning caused by a blister he got playing tennis. That wound was, I’m sure, well tended. Think about how wounds received on the battlefield would have had to be treated – or simply ignored and men just kept on going. And you know how that worked out.
Most of France’s casualties were at Verdun. An entire generation of men were wiped out in that year-long madness. Quelle horreur, quelle folie.
Of course, it didn’t help one bloody bit that the French army was still wearing “French blue” uniforms. When it was suggested they be issued brown or dark green, such as the Yankees were wearing, the Senat said Non. “It would destroy their morale. Frenchmen do not hide.”
Bon Dieu, livrez-nous
Oops. Sorry about all that. History major – occupational hazard.
I, for one, am always interested in historical context!
I spent many weekends babysitting the Humphrey children when they were toddlers. They were part of the elite and talented (some of them) who built Kalamazoo.
The crowds are huge. I also think that it looks like a send off scene.
Amazing historical photographs. It’s wonderful the amount of family materials you have! Envy….. 😀
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It does seem as if it’s a sending-off… very sad, really as so many won’t have made it home.
Luanne, these crowd photos are fascinating to me. While I have found the same type of photo album, our pictures seem to be strictly family ones. These pictures say so very much about the time and places – how many of these farewells were echoed across every state in those days??
Definitely urban, though. Rural goodbyes were on a much smaller scale.
Fascinating. Thanks for including!