Groups of Latter-day Saints around the world posed for their branch portraits in 1904:
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Berlin, Germany
Tuasivi, Samoa
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Copenhagen, Denmark
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Pelton, England
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Edinburgh, Scotland
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Frankfurt, Germany, Sunday School
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Aintab, Syria
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Atlanta, Georgia
Eastwood, England
Visiting High Park Wood, a remnant of Sherwood Forest
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Thun, Switzerland
Aleppo, Syria
UPDATE: In reference to the discussion of hairstyles, Curt A. sends this photo of a group of ladies from Preston, Idaho, from the following year (1905), a great closeup look at the ‘dos of the era — no bedhead here! Thanks, Curt.
two pretty decent-sized groups in syria, wow.
Lovely, lovely photos. I particularly like the Danish one. And the Scottish one. And the Syrian photos. Well, really, I like all of them.
Those Scottish hats are great, but what’s with the Fundamentalist hairstyles in Georgia?
The Syrian branches were part of the Turkish Mission, one of our more exotic mission locales, covering the Holy Land. Many of our members there were Armenian. I don’t have enough detail yet to write about it, but later, during the Turkish genocide of the Armenians, there is an instance of an entire branch miraculously escaping during a night-time flight across a border. I wish I could read the Armenian minutes in the archives!
Ha! Researcher, I hadn’t noticed that, but there certainly is a lot of “high hair” there! As for fun hats, I kinda like the straw hats worn by the English picnickers.
Syria? Wow. I had no idea.
Though I rarely comment, these photo posts are among my favorites. Thanks for posting them so regularly, Ardis. As Latter-day Saints continue to gather information on “ungathered” Saints, these pictorial sources will, I think, prove to be crucial in complimenting textual sources to better understand who these persons were.
Regarding the hair of those Saints in Atlanta, I just assumed those Sisters were ahead of their time in using the “bump-it.”
Once again, terrific pictures Ardis!
And to think all those folks are our brothers and sisters.
Wow – the “bump-it”. [shaking head] Maybe the folks at Yearning for Zion would be interested?
Anyhow, to keep the conversation on such things as hair and hats, I have to point out the awesome hats of the men in the Syria picture. Them’s cool!
Ha. And the elders in my mission in the 80’s teased me for wearing wide 70’s ties.
I’ve often wondered, did these photos come with names or are their faces condemned to anonymity? I suspect the only captions sent with the photos were the ones you provided. It is so much work to reconstruct the names (if it is even possible) and so much easier for some to collect them at the time.
Those are so fun to look at…
Bruce, once in a great while, especially when it is a small group of missionaries, I’ll find names listed. But these group photos of branches have never been identified in the places I’ve found them, beyond the name of the branch or mission. They were sent to the magazines (Juvenile Instructor, especially) in response to requests for ward pictures, so I doubt that they even came in with names. We can hope that copies may have been retained by branch members with identifications attached, but I think otherwise they are lost to time.
I was once looking up something in the IE from about 1915, and was startled to turn the page and see a photograph of my grandfather in a group of missionaries in Australia.
I know the feeling, Left Field! I’ve put together another photo post to use at a later date, this one of missionary pictures from 1912, and the one at the very top jumped off the magazine page at me because my grandfather, in a picture younger than I had ever seen before, was staring up at me.
Did you get a copy of that Australian picture, or should I watch for it to get you a scan?
Ardis-
I always enjoy your photo features. Where do you find the images?
They’re all from the old church magazines. Most of the ward groups like those in this set come from the Juvenile Instructor; I find a lot fewer pictures, but good ones, of children and missionaries and teens in the other magazines. They’re mostly used as fillers in those magazines, but somehow when you bring a whole group of them together this way, they add up to something more than their individual parts, I think.
I’m glad to hear from several of you that you aren’t getting tired of this kind of post yet.
I have a picture that I think is a school in Utah around 1870-1890 I would like to see if someone could identify it, they are all wearing large cone shapped toped hats, and there is one very old man in the pic
I have relatives from utah that were LDS but I dont see them in the pic,
Help
Don