eBay Tuesday: Women, Bicycles, And The Civil War

If there's one thing this week's New London-related auction item on eBay proves, it's that people were taking strange pictures well before the age of Facebook.

This listing is quite simply labeled "Woman with Civil War Hat, Bicycle, Bowtie." It is being offered by user arden78 in Arden, De. The seller describes it as a cabinet photo, probably from the late 1800s, four-and-a-half by six-and-three-quarters inches. The only clues to its background are the name Julia Sawyer, written on the back of the photo, and faint lettering suggesting the photo was taken at a Bank Street studio by someone named Washburn.

This last part seems to be accurate, although I haven't found the studio location or even Washburn's first name. There was indeed a photographer named Washburn, who had a rather lackluster endorsement included in the "Local Notes" section of an 1899 issue of : "Let Washburn take your photographs. He makes natural photographs and finishes them artistically." There was a similarly stilted appeal in another Local Notes: "Washburn, the photographer, has the happy faculty of getting nice pictures with babies. Take the children to him when you want their likeness."

Julia Sawyer is also a little mysterious. The records on FindAGrave.com show a possible candidate in Julia Sawyer Gallipo, who lived in New London County, was born in 1868, and died in 1949. She may have been this woman who, in 1913, was living on Howard Street and looking for someone to tear down a house on the corner of Washington and Brewer Streets.

She may even have been the person involved in this colorful 1920 case of a rental dispute dispute. There was a Julia Sawyer who was renting a room in New London to Beatrice Burton, a girl who worked in a drugstore. When Burton accidentally stained the walls and woodwork with liquid dye and didn't inform Sawyer, the landlady discovered the damage and took Burton's handbag and bedclothes as collateral. Burton got her clothes back on the promise to pay $5 for the damage, but when Sawyer refused to return the handbag Burton went to an attorney and successfully pressed a charge of theft against Sawyer. However, Sawyer took the case to the Supreme Court of Errors of Connecticut, whose judges determined that there had been an error in the judgment.

As for the other items: the crossed sabers of the hat suggest it may have belonged to a cavalry officer in the Union Army, albeit before an order to turn the sabers edges up. Bicycles became especially popular during the Victorian era, with the "Psycho Ladies Bicycle" appearing in 1889 as the first mass-produced women's two-wheeler. The invention even played a significant role in the feminist movement; with the traditionally male clothing added in, it isn't too much of a stretch to consider that Sawyer may have been part of this movement.

The seller is asking $75 for the photograph. The auction ends at 9:36 p.m. on Wednesday.

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