I believe this is an old girl friend of Howell C. Davis Minnie's dad. The only remark is a cryptic note on the back of the photo. I don't know who this woman is or what became of her but I like the shot. My estimated date of 1880 is just a guess based on Howell's age.
Sometimes I take on hopeless restoration jobs because I find something in the image worth extracting. I found this old mounted house print in my mother’s collection of family pictures. It previously belonged to my grandmother Hazel and my great-grandmother Minnie Raver. The print is in poor condition. It’s heavily faded, has large mold spots, and thousands of long linear scratches. I started removing blemishes but quickly realized that this image requires more work than it’s worth. So I decided to pull out what caught my eye in the first place. The small inset image in the upper left is the only picture I have found of Elizabeth Fulk 1852 – 1925. Elizabeth is one of my great-great-grandmothers. I am pretty sure this is Elizabeth because Hazel’s notes on the backside read, “Grandmother, mother, Uncle Will, Aunt Callie, Mabel, Bacon girls Norma and (Maud?).” The tinted woman is Elizabeth. I recognize Minnie (Hazel’s mother) standing beside her and Will, the only male in the picture off to the side. Minnie, Will, Callie, and Mabel were some of Elizabeth’s children. Minnie Raver was born in 1881 and died in 1977. She married around 1898. I estimate this picture was taken shortly before Minnie’s marriage giving an approximate date of 1897.