He’s a Mystery!

It doesn’t help that this tintype photo is so dark. However, this young man is dressed in pants with a white shirt, very wide tie, vest and jacket. He is also posed next to a chair, which was a popular prop from the 1860’s onwards.

Close Up

Notice the man’s tie. It is extremely wide, covering his shirt. This tie style was in vogue in the 1850’s. By the middle of the Civil War period, men’s ties had gone in the opposite direction and were extremely skinny and small.

My guess is that this photo is perhaps from around 1860 or the late 1850’s. It is another of the mystery pile that were associated with the Tarbox family.

George Tarbox, born in 1818, married Mary Elizabeth Scripture. They are my 3x great grandparents and they settled in Calais, Maine. Mary Elizabeth had a sister, Lucretia, who married Benjamin Shattuck. Benjamin was born about 1833; he, Lucretia and their family also lived in Calais, Maine.

I have a photo of Benjamin taken much later.

Benjamin Shattuck

The Scripture family was from New Hampshire and the Tarboxes did some traveling, both to New Hampshire and Boston, Massachusetts.

Do you think the young man in the tintype is Benjamin Shattuck? They look a lot alike and each has his hair parted in about the same place. Benjamin’s face is a bit fuller, but that often happens with age.

I find it interesting that the tie styles are so similar, too, even though a number of years passed in between these two photos. Benjamin’s photo is a cabinet card and his picture was probably taken in the 1880’s, when he would have been in his 40’s.

What do you think? Is this Benjamin Shattuck?