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Friday Slide Show: An Old Passport
23 February 2024
Yesterday the mail brought a surprise from the dear departed past (as Dave Frishberg used to call it). Among a few other things in a padded orange envelope, an uncle had sent us our great great grandmother's passport.
As it happened, the exterior of our building was being spray painted when the envelope arrived. So the windows were covered in painter's plastic to protect them from the spray.
That turned out to be a fantastic light modifier.
The plastic diffused the sunlight perfectly to light the small document evenly from the opposite side of the light box we were standing over. You can emulate the effect without hiring painters by temporarily hanging a shower curtain with similarly light-diffusing properties over your windows.
Light Modifier. Painter's plastic outside covering the window.
In addition to the straight-on simulated scans to document the passport, we shot a few close-ups at a more dramatic angle. Which was fun.
We like to photograph our one-of-a-kind treasures to share them with other interested family members. They get all the fun of seeing the treasure without any of the burden of actually taking care of it. Safely storing it, that is.
A side benefit of having copies of the images distributed to other family members is that no disaster will wipe all of them out. That's a wonderful thing.
By coincidence, we had just found a photo of that Great Great Grandmother stacked in pile of things-to-be-framed in a cabinet at Mom's house. It was in tatters and faded but that's just a challenge to us. We repaired it and put it up on the family genealogy page.
On the back of the print, someone had written, "Maria De Martini mother of Fiorina Bacigalupi who was grandmother of Barbara and Robert Pasini."
Not entirely accurate. It's Barbara Pasini and Robert Garbarino. But we also wondered about "De Martini." Was it "de Martini" or "De Martini" or "DeMartini" or "Demartini?" There wasn't nearly as much writing required in the 1800s as we practice today so references are hard to come by. The variations all sound the same. So which was it?
Well, the passport answers that. Demartini.
It also answers a few more questions. Issued in 1906, it shows she was 52 years old (using an antique script for "5") and had gray hair. You'll notice the hair color for beard (barba) and mustache (baffi) are struck out.
She lived to be 70, dying in her daughter's house on 19th Avenue in 1924 after a long illness. Uncle had also sent us the building permit application and plans for that house that Great Grandfather had built with his brother-in-law.
For just $3,500. Ah, that dear but departed past!
