Bliley Network Header Graphic
|| FAMILY HISTORY: SITE MAP, LINKS || BLILEY NETWORK: SITE MAP , SEARCH ||

SPIRAL PHOTO ALBUMS
OF SAM WAGNER

Eight of Eighteen Albums in the Collection

Updated: November 21, 2023

     

 
 INTRODUCTION

In 2017 Dave Wagner loaned me a collection of "recent"spiral-bound photo albums created by Sam Wagner. Two of the eight spiral-bound albums focus on the Bliley family reunion in Erie, PA in 1946. The others were a mixed collection of mostly current family activities from the late 1930s to the early 1950s. Based on the numbering scheme of the albums, of the 17 numbered albums only a few are in my possession. Dave told me his father, Dick, was offered items at the way to the street after Sam died. He grabbed what he though would be worth a second view, but did not necessarily grab all of Sam's works. Thank God Dick got these and the older black albums!

I began scanning them July 20, 2019 as a tribute of Sam's and Inez's contribution to our family history and history of their lives in Harborcreek, Pennsylvania. In all, I have invested about 60 hours of work in this project. Each page of the albums were scanned at 800 ppi, and selected and unique photos at 1200 for closer examination. Then, I edited nearly all of the photos to correct for chemical aging and image contrast. Many of these photos are of the "snapshot" class, and printed on with an enlarger at home from a film negative. Most of Sam and Inez's early work was done with glass plate negatives with several times higher resolution.

Believing some Wagner family members may be interested in seeing and owning copies of these photos in digital form, I am temporarily posting them here on my Web site, www.Bliley.com, for viewing by family members. I have paused in the scanning process to see if there is sufficient interest for me to invest another 20 or 30 hours in scanning the remaining three albums. If there is enough family interest in these albums, I will complete the scanning before distribution.

Sam and Inez's work has blessed my family with their work which appear in other parts of this Web site. As a thank you gift to Sam's descendants, I am offering each of you a USB flash drive containing the digital product of my effort and any other family history materials from the public portion of my Web site. I intend to remove the files listed and linked below from my Web site this fall, after you all have had a chance to review them and hopefully enjoy this walk through The Wayback Machine.

I hope you enjoy viewing them. I await your comments.

Chuck

Charles A. Bliley
736 Bel Arbor Trail
Webster, NY 14580-9400
E-Mail: K3NAU@AOL.com
Tele: 585 872-9155

ALBUM GALLERIES  ONLINE
 ABOUT THE ALBUMS' CAPTIONS

In 2017, Sam's niece, Norma Jean Kennedy Venable, reviewed the albums and placed captions and notes wherever she could identify the people and locations. Norma used a ballpoint pen in most cases, but a lead pencil on occasions. Sam created very few captions in this set of albums using a black ink fountain pen. To the left is a sampler of Sam's and Norma's handwriting as used in the albums.

Click on the photo of the sampler to view.
 ONLINE GALLERY LONGEVITY

Since most of these albums are focused on Sam and Ada's lives in the 1930s and 40s, I have no keen interest in permanently adding them to my online family history site for the general public. They are presented here to share them with them principally with Wagner family members.

Until they are removed from my Web site, they will be protected from being indexed by search engines such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo, through a special file on my site named "robots.txt". This file contains a list of all folders/directories that I request search engines not to index and present to the public in search results. In the last 20 years, this simple tool has worked for me; it is commonly used on many Web sites. The entry for these files reads, "Disallow: /family/albums/Sam's_Spiral". Using this simple, but effective technique, robots.txt file, the galleries can be obscured from the general public and accessed without the burden of a password. The album's URL can be copied and pasted into an e-mail letter to share it with people that know.

 ARCHIVE OF ORIGINAL MATERIALS

The photos below show the plastic tub in which I am storing the albums and glass plates that I acquired in recent years from Dave Wagner. These include the classic black albums created by Sam and Inez in the early 1900s. The black photo albumsand data resources were transfered to the Harborcreek Historical Society in November 2023.

Archive Box

Album Groupings

Sample of Early Album Archive
Package and Description

Glass Plate and Traditional Photos
Work Area
Click on each photo to view a larger image.

 

 OTHER BLILEY.NET PHOTO GALLERIES & RESOURCES

Photo Albums of Sam & Inez Wagner

Twelve photo albums created together in the early 1900s.

Glass Plate Collection Preview

I have begun work on the large glass plate collection of photos taken, by or copied by, Sam Wagner. This small sample of eight photos provides some insight to Sam's photographic duplication techniques and an apparent experiment with Ambrotype positive imaging. (Caution: These are large images.)

This site and associated images are Copyright 2009, by Charles A. Bliley, Webster, NY, U.S.A.

Permission only granted for use in personal genealogy work by the Wagner families.

|| RETURN TO HOME ||