I love gutta percha. We tend to think of plastics as an invention of the 1930′s or 1940′s, but gutta percha has been used since the mid 19th century. I bought this photograph from an estate sale in Dunn (Harnett County) today because of the case, and I had no idea that it would teach me something and present a mystery.

A Tintype from a Harnett County Estate

What is taught me is that this case is not gutta percha, but rather a thermoplastic case. Shellac and wood fibers were combined and pressed in a large mold, and the result is the beautifully detailed case you see here. What struck me was that the hinges and clasp are all intact and working properly, which is sadly not the case for most of these cases that remain. These miniature cases were extremely popular during the civil war era, in no small part because of the nature of the small tintype images that were “direct positive” prints (meaning that there was no negative). They were the Civil War equivalent of the Polaroid “instant” photos, although the tintype process could hardly be called instant.

The Inside of the Thermoplastic Case

This particular case was made by “Littlefield, Parsons & Co.” of Florence, Massachusetts. This company produced cases under this name from 1858 through 1866 — the correct time period for the enclosed tintype photo. The case is exquisite; the mystery, though, has to do with what was inside of this case.

My first clue that something was strange was the pressed metal matting that surrounded the photo. Embossed along the edges in tiny letters is “DEAN & EMERSON, PATENTED DEC 24, 1861. WORCESTER, MASS No. 49″. Dean & Emerson was a competing manufacturer of photographic supplies, and the odds of seeing a Dean & Emerson mat in a Littlefield, Parsons & Co. case is slim.

Stranger yet was the tintype — or rather, tintypes — underneath the mat. Here is the family tintype in its entirety:

The Family (?) Tintype Portrait

And here is the tintype hidden behind the family tintype:

The Mystery "Hidden" Portrait

One more clue about this photo’s mysteries is on the paper backing of the case. Here’s a close-up of the pencil handwriting:

The Name in the Case

It’s also worth noting that there was no glass on top of the photo and no backing material behind the photo. Given the relatively fragile nature of tintype photos, this seems a bit unusual.

I have also had trouble ascertaining the gender of the person in the “hidden” photo. The handwritten name on the back appears to be “Jennie Panco”. The three people in the “family” photo are clearly male, but the hidden photo looks a bit androgynous to me.

To get a step closer in this mystery I decided to research Jenny Panco. Sleuthing through census records, birth and death records and cemetery records has let me stitch together the following information about Jennie Panco, whose maiden name was Virginia Wright:

Virginia was the eldest child of Joseph and Elizabeth Wright. She had two younger brothers – Henry and Bun. Virginia had one child by her first husband (Thomas Alex Kendrick) named Joseph Wright. Virginia’s second husband was (German born) Paul Panco, and it’s through this marriage that we see the name “Jennie Panco” in the census records.

So here’s my theory: the “family” photo shows Virginia’s father and two brothers. Her father and brothers all appear in the 1870 and 1880 censuses, so we know they were alive in 1870. And if we guess that this tintype was taken in 1870, they would have been 48, 11 and 9 respectively (which corresponds reasonably well to the ages of the people in this photo).

That leaves the second “hidden” photo — which, in theory, could be of Virginia, Thomas or Paul. I’m guessing that it was of Thomas; the fur hat and wry expression don’t strike me as German. What happened to Thomas is something of a mystery, but it’s reasonable to assume that he died sometime in the early 1870′s. Could Virginia have kept this hidden photo of her first husband as a private keepsake?

The Wrights and Kendricks were all from eastern Kentucky and western West Virginia, and that leaves the question of how this photo ended up in Harnett County. When I was looking up death records, I found a Bunn Wright buried in Tabor City, Columbus County, NC. Columbus County is about 80 miles south of Harnett County. Bunn Wright died 12 years after his sister, and it’s plausible that he could have kept his sister’s photo of her dead husband (and he photo of him with his father) as a keepsake.

True, this is all speculation. But it’s taught me a bit about a Civil War era family, and how artifacts can move around as the people they belong to come into and out of existence.