You have to stay on your toes in the archives or you’ll miss the weird stuff. Today we have a bit of a Jack Sprat and his wife situation–we didn’t know something and they didn’t know something else but when you put it together it all makes sense.
It’s all about this striking image, one of several in the William Ward Watkin collection that document a trip to Spain in about 1920:
It’s a great photo but we always wondered who on earth those other people could be. They clearly aren’t Watkin family members and there really aren’t any useful clues. They might be anyone, even people he simply met up with on his travels.
Then a little while ago we received a collection from the Howard family here in Houston. It included some scrapbooks, wherein we discovered another copy of the same image. It turns out they had no idea who that man sitting in the middle with their family was!
Bonus:
