Richman Family Album

Last Valentines Day, I stopped at an antique shop here in town and bought a Victorian photo album (patented November 1895) that had been languishing on a dusty shelf for a couple years. I'd always stopped and looked at it, but I always walked away empty handed.

But seeing as it was Valentines Day, and I figured I'd buy myself a present.

And I did. Even got the dealer to knock $15 off the price because it's been deteriorating with all the mishandling.

Feeling mildly guilty and yet entirely thrilled to have a new project, I took it home and set about extracting the photos. I'd been told that the dealer took the photos out when he got it, and there were no names on any of them. Still, I wanted to see for myself.

The photos are almost all taken by local photographers (mainly Salem County), and given the nature of Southern New Jersey genealogy, I figured that I have a 50-50 chance of being related to these people, one way or another.

So, tweezers in hand, I started pulling all 54 pictures out of the album. They were almost all cabinet cards, but there was one daguerreotype and one tintype. I was over 3/4 of the way through when I pulled a card with a name on the back.

"Charles D. Richman, 4 1/2 months."

I have *heaps* of Richmans in my family--the Richman's Ice Cream folks from Woodstown/Sharptown. So I looked him up in the census, found his parents in my genealogy database, and added Charles to the family tree.

In an effort to flesh out Charles' entry, I decided to see if I could find an exact date of birth, date of death, etc.

Charles DuBois Richman died on Valentines Day, 1988.