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Kenrick A.Claflin & Son

10441. (lot 5 cabinet photos / CDV’s) Nantucket Sea Captain John L. Brooks and his family c.1860-1880’s.

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10441. (lot 5 cabinet photos / CDV’s) Nantucket Sea Captain John L. Brooks and his family c.1860-1880’s.

10441. (lot 5 cabinet photos / CDV’s) Nantucket Sea Captain John L. Brooks and his family c.1860-1880’s. Lot of five photos includes three cabinet card photos and two CDV photos of Nantucket Sea Captain John L. Brooks and his family. Captain Brooks was born in 1834. One Schooner that Captain Brooks owned was the three-masted “Mary E. Crosby”. Built in 1873 at the beginning of the “tern schooners”, she would be a Nantucket vessel for about a dozen years. She was launched as the “Imogene Divert” in Dennisville, New Jersey. She was not a large schooner: 111.3 feet in length, 23.4 feet in breadth, 8.6 feet in depth, and of 188 gross tons. She was of oak and pine, and iron-framed. She had a center board. The “Imogene Divert” had a twin sister, the “Deborah H. Divert,” built the following year. The “Deborah” and the “Imogene” stayed together in New Jersey until 1884, when “Imogene” came to Nantucket as her new home port. Her new owner-master, John L. Brooks, changed her name to the “Mary E. Crosby.” A watercolor of the Mary E. Crosby from the period that Captain Brooks owned it, hangs in the Peabody-Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts. The two CDVs–one of Captain Brooks and one of his wife, Eunice Brooks (maiden name, Eunice C. Gardner, born 1849), date from the late 1860s or early 1870s and show each in a finely dressed posed view. The three cabinet cards show the family a bit later in their lives – one each of Captain Brooks, his wife and another of a 16-year-old daughter identified as L. A. Brooks – probably date from the mid to late 1880s. Captain Brooks sports a longer beard in this view. Each person is identified in pencil on the back of each photo. An additional inscription in ink appears on the back of the CDV of Eunice: “A Nantucket girl, as she appeared on the 26th of Sept. at 2 ½ P.M. You will see by the picture how white my hair has grown since I have become great aunt.” The cabinet cards were taken in the studio of J. Freeman, Nantucket. Photographer of the CDVs is not identified. CDVs measure 2.5″ x 4.25″ each and cabinet cards measure 4.25″ x 6.5″ each; little if any soiling, just a few very small light spots of foxing, otherwise in excellent condition. A fine early Nantucket lot. (VG+). $175.