There are captions and then there are CAPTIONS full of information. The big question with captions is “Is it true?” In the case of this small tintype, the answer was yes.
On the back of this image appears the following:
This is “Beautie” an important member of the C.C. Smith Family at #188 Livingston St, Brooklyn, NY for many years when mother was a girl and lived at #186
(Between 1870 and 1885 approx)
APH
This precious little dog was a valued part of the Smith household and a treasured canine friend of a little girl next door. There is a story there. Layers and layers of one.
APH (don’t you love that the person signed it!) used a ballpoint pen to jot down the note. That dates the caption to after October 29, 1945, when Gimbels sold the first ballpoint pen. [i]
The dog belonged to C.C. Smith at 188 Livingston St., Brooklyn, New York. This is the easy part. A quick look at city directories identified the owner as Crawford C. Smith, President of the Nassau National Bank. In the New York State Census of 1865, Smith owned a brick house at 140 Livingston St., Brooklyn worth 10K dollars. It’s possible street renumbering in the 1870s changed the address to 188.2
So who’s at 186 Livingston St. between 1870 and 1885? That’s the date range written by APH. The Alfred Perego family lived there between 1871 and 1882. Alfred died in 1879.
The tintype mat is of the 1870s style with an embossed surface and pinkish color. Combined with the city directory information this photo likely dates from the early 1870s. APH specifically mentions his mother being fond of the pet when she was a girl.
Turns out that Alfred Perego, a gentleman’s furniture dealer, married Ann Smith, daughter of Crawford C. Smith, and moved next door. Alfred and Ann had one daughter Frances R. born in 1862. She married John K. Harris in 1887 and the children included a son Alfred P. 3 He’s likely the APH who wrote the caption. Frances’s brother Joseph named his firstborn after their grandfather Crawford Cook.
What’s curious is that APH didn’t mention that his grandfather owned the dog.
There appears to be little information on this branch of the family in online trees. I’ve written to a few individuals hoping they’d be interested in having a photo of an ancestral dog. It’s remarkable to find an identified photo of a family pet with verified information. If you are a descendant of Crawford Cook Smith or Alfred Perego, please reach out at photodetective@maureentaylor.com.
[i] Stephen Dowling. The Cheap Pen that Changed Writing Forever. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20201028-history-of-the-ballpoint-pen#:~:text=The%20creation%20of%20the%20ballpoint,in%20fact%2C%20a%20lot%20older.&text=An%20American%2C%20John%20J%20Loud,ballpoint%20pen%20back%20in%201888.
2.Ancestry.com. New York, U.S., State Census, 1865 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2014.
3.”New York, New York City Marriage Records, 1829-1940,” database, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:Q2CF-1V7M : 22 July 2021), John McKillop Harris and Frances Rebecca Perego, 05 Apr 1887; citing Marriage, Kings, New York, United States, New York City Municipal Archives, New York; FHL microfilm 1,544,346.