Finding an old labeled snapshot is so rewarding, because there are hundreds of unlabed specimens in drawers, boxes and albums everywhere.
Steinmetz Sisters Snapshot
In this case:
Henry F. Hahn, Rose A. Steinmetz Hahn, Elizabeth Ann Steinmetz Breitenstein and Michael Henry Breitenstein Sr. posed in St. Matthews City, Jefferson Co., Kentucky in the late 1930s, probably outside the Hahn home in the driveway of 212 Chenoweth Lane where they lived in 1935 and 1940.
This is a photo of my grandfather’s aunt and uncle and parents. Elizabeth Breitenstein, the first of this crowd to pass away, died in 1943 so that is the outside date. Rose, her younger sister (1877-1951) and Henry F. Hahn her brother-in-law (1883-1965) were eleven and seventeen years younger than Elizabeth. I have seen photographs of Elizabeth in 1937 and she resembles those photos, so my estimate would be between 1935 and 1943.
Here is the back of the same shapshot.
Kodak’s No. 2A Brownie produced bewteen 1907 and 1936 used film type 116 and produced pictures 6.5 x 11cm in size. The Kodak Classics site is a fount of information. The section on cameras and film was a huge help in figuring out which cameras took photographs that were what sizes. Remember, just because a camera was made in between certain years, that camera may have been used for decades after Kodak ceased production. So the film or photograph size can be used for an estimate of a beginning date, but not a very specific ending date. Film formats 116 and 616 were used up to 1984 when it was discontinued by Kodak, but again, that doesn’t account for film already in a camera, household or store. I have a Kodak Trimlite Instamatic from the 1970s in a drawer somewhere that has film in from the late 1980s. The camera is 40 years old, the partially used roll of film is 30 years old.
Background knowledge: I have seen other pictures of my great grandparents, Elizabeth and Michael Henry Breitenstein, so I recognize them. I have researched the Steinmetz family in the federal census for Jefferson Co., Kentucky, so I know the siblings. I have read obituaries so I know Rose Hahn survived her sister. I have the typed family history outline by Thelma Breitenstein Farmer so I could check my work against someone who knew them all.
1940 Ky Jefferson St. Matthews 56-6-10b-57 212 Chenoweth Lane, Henry F. Hahn
