Dixie Roots: What's Your Name?

These two photographs came from the collection of Agnes Grace Ferrer. Based on the inscriptions, we presume these to be pictures of her great grandmother, Emma Jane Taylor McKee.

What the inscriptions tell us:
The front of the photo says Our Dear Mother, TMM and God bless her forever is my prayer. Because this inscription seems to be signed with TMM, the assumption is that the front inscription was written by Thomas M. McKee. Thus “our mother” is Emma McKee.

The back reads To Thomas McKee, Memphis Tenn, US and Left Vallejo July 15, 1870. The “To Thomas McKee” line seems to have been written by one person (perhaps the sender) while the other inscriptions appear to have been written by a second (perhaps Thomas himself).

What the photographer’s stamp tells us:
This photograph was taken by Monsieur & Madame Barat. George and Mrs. Barat operated two photography studios in Banbury, Oxfordshire (South Bar / The Green) from 1863 to 1870. The town of Banbury lies on the River Cherwell about 38 miles southeast of Birmingham where Emma McKee lived. The image on their stamp is the locally-famous Banbury Cross, located at the cross-roads of South Bar and Horsefair.

Present day Banbury Cross. Photo courtesy Cotswald.

What we know about Emma and Thomas McKee:
The following is published with great uncertainty: Emma Jane Taylor was born in about 1820 and married John McKee in about 1842. They had two children, Thomas and Dennis, before John presumably passed away. In 1851, Emma married Alfred Smith; they had four children. Throughout this time, Emma appears to have lived in or around Birmingham.

Thomas McKee moved from the U.K. to the U.S. in about 1868. Family lore says both he and his wife, Amelia, traveled back and forth between the continents several times before finally settling in Memphis, TN and starting a family. But Thomas did not stay put for long. He seems to have traveled to the West Coast a few times before finally abandoning his family for good and taking up permanent residence in California where he lived until his death in 1921.

Shaky Solutions:
In an 1870 Memphis city directory, Thomas McKee is listed as a clerk for the wholesale clothing company Seessel & Son. Keeping in mind that city directories reflect the status of the year before publication date, Thomas could easily be in Memphis in 1869, travel to Vallejo, CA (in the San Francisco Bay area) in 1870, and then be back in Memphis for the 1880 census. It’s unknown how many times he traveled back and forth in the ensuing decade.

If Emma was born in 1820, she’d be between 43 and 50 during the 1863-1870 window of operation for the photography studio. That seems to match the age of the subject.

Do you know who this is?
If you have additional information about the McKees – or photographs of this woman that we can compare to – we’d love to hear from you!

Sources:

photoLondon
From Daguerreotype to Dry Plate: The Grown of Professional Photography in Banbury, 1850-1920, by Sarah Gosling, 1984. Published in Cake and Cockhorse: The Magazine of The Banbury Historical Society
Cotswolds