Two pages from autograph/souvenir type books from 1886. Artist and publisher unknown. Size: About 4 x 6 and 3/4″ each.
Availability status: SOLD
“Forget me not Miss Annie Baxter….”
“Dear Annie:
May friendship and
Truth be with you in
Youth and catnip and
Sage cheer up your
Old age.
– Harry L. Wiley, Beckville, Tex., May 10th /86″
“I now a secret will unfold
Long has it smothered been
Oh never yet has it been told
Valued by fears with in
Eternal life demand
You must my secret keep
Oh in your bosom let it swell
Unconcious let it sleep.
– Your Little Sister, E. L. B.” (middle initial L?)
A departure from our numerous postcards and photos, here are a couple of antique pages from a souvenir/autograph type book that would have been popular with students, from 1886. (Thank you Harry Wiley for recording the date and place.) Aren’t they beautiful, just look at those details! In the first one, two children, a little boy and an older girl are perched on a garden wall, watching some snails. Note the girl’s fingerless grey gloves, the lovely collars for both of them, and the hats (always hats!) There is writing on the back of this first card which is, “Dear Annie, May your honest endeavors be a ….” The writer did not finish this thought. The back wasn’t scanned – just to save having to fold the paper too much, and the poem recorded here by Annie’s sister was not found online, so is a mystery as far as name and author. Perhaps the sister was the poet? I must admit I don’t quite understand the poem; perhaps the subject of the verse is Love. The first poem is cute, and was one of a number of sayings written down by many a school chum, maybe at the end of the school year. The second card shows a drawing of pretty young mother, from inside the house, handing her daughter a rose through the open window. The little girl is out in the yard with the flowers and a rather large butterfly.
Harry Wiley is on the 1880 Federal Census for “Beat No. 2”, Panola County, Texas. He was born in Louisiana, about 1868. The census is: Sarah Baxter, widowed head of household; her daughter Ella, son Harry, stepson John Baxter, nephew Thomas Davis, and niece Ellen Riband[?] It would appear that Wiley would have possibly been Sarah Baxter’s first married name (but evidence was not found). Ancestry has a family tree that shows Annie Baxter born in Texas 1871, showing John Baxter as brother.
Sources: Year: Year: 1870; Census Place: Beat 2, Panola, Texas; Roll: M593_1601; Page: 265B; Image: 76; Family History Library Film: 553100. (Ancestry.com)
1880; Census Place: Precinct 2, Panola, Texas; Roll: 1322; Family History Film: 1255322; Page: 216C; Enumeration District: 061. (Ancestry.com)
Year: 1900; Census Place: Cleburne, Johnson, Texas; Roll: 1649; Page: 21B; Enumeration District: 0057; FHL microfilm: 1241649. (Ancestry.com)