I bought this batch of seven photographs from a shop in Baltimore in 2024. Two of the photographs are inscribed with full names. Let’s start with those.

Below is Charles Harold Church (1888-1909) who died at 21 of typhoid fever after an illness of three weeks. At the time of his death Harold was “employed in the car service of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad.” He was the son of William H. Church (1864-1941), a baggage master for the railroad, and Carrie A. Crouse (1866-1942) whose father was a clerk for the railroad. On the reverse of this photograph is an inscription which reads,

“Harold Church
I was engaged to be married to him. Daddy was his best friend. He died when he was 21 years. After he was dead a couple of years, I married Daddy. He said he was in love with me before Harold died for some time.”

Another photograph with identifying information incribed on its reverse was that of “George Lawrence Singewald 2 1/2  years” seen below. A native of San Fransisco, George was the son of John Lawrence Singewald (1886-1967) and Helen A. Lacey (1889-1947). He married Susan Patrina Morgan (1911-2002) in 1934 and they had four children, three sons and a daughter.

At first look, I was unable to decipher the surname in the above inscription. George Lawrence who? I understood that the surname is Singewald only after seeing that Joseph T. Singewald was one of Harold’s pallbearers. Another of Harold’s pallbearers was Philip E. Reiter. This information convinced me of the identities of Daddy and the author of the notes on the reverses of most of the photographs.

Daddy was Joseph Theophilus Singewald (1882-1945). He worked as a clerk for the railroad in 1910, but afterwards had long career as an auditor for the Internal Revenue Service. He was the son of George Traugott Singewald (1854-1920), a painter and paper hanger whose father was born in Saxony, Germany, and Mary Margaretha Windfelder (1864-1882) who died from “a short illness” about seven weeks after he was born. In 1911 Daddy married Alberta Irene Reiter (1889-1974) who wrote the notes about Daddy on the photographs. They had three daughers. Irene, as she was known, was the daughter of Philip W. Reiter, a freight clerk for the Western Maryland Railroad, and Alberta S. Robinson (1867-1924). Her brother was Philip Edmond Reiter (1889-1974), the above-mentioned pallbearer, who was a clerk for the railroad in 1910.

Above we see Daddy standing on the steps of 14 North Carey Street, Baltmore which was the home of the Shaftesbury College of Expression from 1906-1930. The college was previously located at 323 N. Charles Street beginning in 1890. Patterson’s American Educational Directory (1914) informs that the “principal” of  the college was silent movie actor and Baltimore native Alice May Youse (1863-1938). In “Paradise in a Breakfast Bowl,” an online essay by John Benedict Buescher, we learn that the college was founded by a very interesting character named Webster Edgerly (1852-1926) who used the pseudonym Edmund Shaftesbury. The following two photographs depict Daddy and Irene’s inscriptions are in the captions.

Finally, below is a photograph of “Daddy’s brother George.” George Raymond Singewald (1884-1927). George was one of Daddy’s two half-brothers, the other being John Lawrence Singewald (1886-1967) mentioned above. They were sons of George Traugott Singewald (1854-1920) like Daddy, but their mother was Ellen L. Lane (1860-1943). George, a photoengraver, married Harriet Mae “Hattie” Cingcade (1885-1959).

There were two other men named Joseph Theophilus Singewald in Baltimore in Daddy’s time. Joseph Theophilus Singewald, Sr. (1860-1953),  a hatter, was a half-brother of Daddy’s father. His son, Joseph Theophilus Singewald, Jr., (1884-1963), was a Johns Hopkins University professor and director of the Maryland Depatrment of Geology, Mines and Water Resources from 1943-1962. The “Karl” whose name is crossed out in the above photograph of Daddy as a toddler was another son of Joseph Theophilus Singewald, Sr., Karl Singewald (1886-1966). Daddy’s obituaries referred to him as “of G.” to distinguish him from the others.

From Wikipedia: Theophilus is a male given name with a range of alternative spellings. Its origin is the Greek word Θεόφιλος from θεός (theós, “God”) and φιλία (philía, “love or affection”) can be translated as “Love of God” or “Friend of God”, i.e., it is a theophoric name, synonymous with the name Amadeus which originates from Latin, Gottlieb in German and Bogomil or Bogumił in Slavic.