Camera obscura

I was genuinely flabbergasted and gobsmacked when glancing at old photographs on eBay on Wednesday when I spotted what I thought was a familiar face. A quick glance on my ancestry.com account verified my suspicion and I purchased my great-great-grandmother's photograph.

Uncle Charley's paternal grandmother.

Even better is it replaces the only copy we had that was destroyed in our 2016 house fire. Thankfully I had a fairly low resolution copy I had made of the photo before the fire which is what I had on ancestry.com.

Elizabeth Roberts Weltner Huls was born on January 3, 1843 and married my great-great-grandfather, Captain William Harrison Huls, on July 31, 1864. They had six children, starting with my great-grandfather Alpheus Eugene Huls.

A.E.'s son Charles Henry Huls was born in 1902, so she knew him before her death on January 7, 1904. (The paternal grandmother known by uncle Charley and grandpa Fred was Capt. Huls's second wife, Eliza Potter Binder Huls.)

Now in the past 20 years I have kept an ongoing search for family names, but the only name on this was the photography studio in our hometown.

Friends have asked me how her albumen cabinet card ended up on eBay. The answer is: who knows? She might have sent copies to friends or family. Since her name wasn't on it someone discarded it at some point. I'm just relieved it wasn't thrown away, someone listed it, and I happened to recognize her.

It does make me wonder about other missed opportunities that have possibly passed me by.

Finally, the eBay seller is from Kansas. My g-g-grandfather's widow, the second wife, moved to Kansas after his death. Did she take a box of photos with her? I shall probably never know.

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Quizzed in Ohio death probe

I have been lucky twice now to score on eBay old press photos relating to the murders: the photo of David Puskin which I primarily use, and now this photo of Dr. S. [sic] Shindel Wingert.

Dr. H. Shindel Wingert

The caption pasted on the back of the photo reads:

With the deaths of two students at the Ohio State University, supposedly from strychnine poisoning, and the illness of at least three others, after partaking of capsules for cold cure, issued from the pharmacy colle(g)e dispensary, university and police officials are engaged in a vigorous investigation. Because of the baffling manner in which only a certain number of the capsules have been found to contain poison out of the bottle supposedly containing nothing but capsules of quinine, has led the authorities to believe the strychnine was administered intentionally. The medicine was issued to students upon prescriptio(n) from Dr. S. [sic] Shindel Wingert, head of the University health services.

Poor Dr. Harry Shindel Wingert apparently never recovered from the scandal. He went on leave after a breakdown in 1926. He returned to OSU in 1928 but died within two months. He was buried in Lancaster Cemetery in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

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