Old photo, dated July 1918.
Availability status: SOLD Size: 6 and 7/8 x 4 and 1/2″
On the back, it looks like the location was written as “Greenhorn Mts” and there is an Ed Halbert reference showing up in a Google eBook snippet view that also has an entry for Greenhorn Mountain (A Modern History of Tulare County by Annie Rosalind Mitchell). This is the best guess so far for the photo’s location. (There are towns named Greenhorn in Grant and Baker Counties, Oregon, and also one Plumas County, California, but the writing on the back of the photo does not look like either of these two states.)
The photo, found at an antique store in Monterey, California, shows five children, ages from about three thru ten or twelve, posed in a buggy pulled by two donkeys. They’re on a dirt trail out in the country; it may be farm country, and we see that the terrain is a little hilly.
We’ll look a little further for Ed Halbert and Tulare County in the next couple of days.
Update: The most promising Halbert – Greenhorn Mountains connection is the above-mentioned possibility, Edward D. Halbert (1846 – 1885) who owned a sheep ranch on Deer Creek, six miles south of Portersville, Tulare County, California. He married Ellen Rhodes and they had four children: Lois (married L. N. Sperry), Edward Fay, Roy Dent and Ernest Sherrill. The children in the photo, if the connection is correct, would likely be grandchildren of E. D. Halbert, and possibly cousins rather than siblings.
UPDATE and CORRECTION: This is the WILSON HALBERT family. See the comments from Carrie. The oldest boy in the hat is her grandfather, born 1905. But we’ll leave the other Halbert family info in this post. Just in case anyone is searching for them, as well.
Sources: Mitchell, Annie Rosalind. A Modern History of Tulare County. 1974. p. 190. Google Books snippet view. (Web Accessed April 10, 2016).
Guinn, J. M. History of the State of California and Biographical Record of the San Joaquin Valley, California. Chicago: The Chapman Publishing Co., 1905. p. 561. Google eBooks. (Web Accessed April 10, 2016).
Deer Creek (Tulare County, California). n.d. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deer_Creek_%28Tulare_County,_California%29. (accessed April 10, 2016).