 A very early street scene of Trappe taken in the 1860s. John K. Caulk (1847-1913) has just hitched his buggy by the little store on the s.e. corner of the main intersection. This is the building shown on the 1877 map. The Dickinson house is in the background. In the 1960s, Sallie Caulk identified the man on the right as her father John K. Caulk Sr. and the man on the left as Ned Hopkins. The boy is unidentified. Dawson, Bowdle and Stevens had a store here circa 1879 and by 1883 it was run by Stevens and Bowdle. The building was torn down by 1892 for what would later be the northern section of Simpson's store which itself was torn down in 2006. This photograph is a quarter plate ambrotype measuring 2 3/4 x 3 1/4 in what is left of a hinged case. An ambrotype is a very early type of photograph used mainly in the 1855-1865 period. It is a negative reversed image on glass that, when backed with a black material, appears as a positive image. This scan of it has been reversed here to make the scene appear normal. This is a companion photo to #41. Exterior ambrotypes are quite rare, and exterior ambrotypes where the location can be identified rarer still. It is certainly one of the earliest photos of a Talbot County scene. |