Another Christmas Surprise

A picture taken by Charles DeFriez Jarvis of his wife and her sisters. 

Courtesy of Randy Cameron.

Yesterday I received an email from an Overson cousin, Randy Cameron, who found this blog and sent an answer in response to a question posed over two years ago:

Does anyone know who has Margaret Jarvis Overson's original photographs? She had hundreds of original photos and photographic plates or negatives of the Jarvis ancestors and family and descendants.

Randy found the blog and emailed to let me know that he has the collection, and would like it to be digitized and preserved, so Randy and my parents are in the midst of making arrangements to do that.

He said there are about twenty boxes full of prints and negatives, and a collection of glass plates, full and half, which he has put into negative sleeves. The prints include 8x10 and 4x5 and other sizes. During World War I, photographic materials were rationed, so the technology was not always used in a linear way. Margaret Jarvis Overson and her father Charles DeFriez Jarvis would make plates, develop the photos, then scrape the emulsion off and reuse the plates. As a result, there are not as many plates in existence as negatives.

He also said that members of his family have the first two volumes of Henry Christian Overson's missionary journal. Here is the third volume (Henry Overson Missionary Journal) with links to images and transcripts of its pages. Hopefully we will also be able to get a copy of that.

It was a real delight to talk to Randy, and I wish I could be there to help with all the arrangements! It is such exciting news to know about the existence of the collection, and to be able to start to make it available to the extended Jarvis and Overson family and descendants of families of St. Johns, Arizona.