# More historic colourized photos



## hollydolly (Mar 12, 2019)

It's amazing  that once colour has been added  it makes the subject look very modern and not something that looks old fashioned despite being anything up to 200 years old....I'm fascinated by photo colourization 

Washington DC car crash 1921










henry Ford 1919


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## hollydolly (Mar 12, 2019)

Times square 1947







Burger flipper 1938


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## hollydolly (Mar 12, 2019)

Joan crawford 1932 ...she looks beautiful 







Elizabeth T 1956


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## hollydolly (Mar 12, 2019)

Samurai Training 1860 ( incredible picture)....






Union soldiers 1863...


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## hollydolly (Mar 12, 2019)

Babe Ruth 1920


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## hollydolly (Mar 12, 2019)

Washington DC filling station 1924







Gordonton NC july 1939 country store ( this is my favourite picture)


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## hollydolly (Mar 12, 2019)

An Oklahoma farmer during the great dust bowl 1939... ( he's so poor this picture actually looks like it could have been taken 100 years before, I wonder if the children in this picture are still alive today)


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## hollydolly (Mar 12, 2019)

Baltimore slums 1938







Unemployed lumber work and his wife 1939 ( the wife looks very much like the fashion and style of today, yet she would have been  in great poverty)


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## hollydolly (Mar 12, 2019)

WW2 military at Easter...







*Nazi Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels scowls at a Jewish photographer, 1933. 

*


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## hollydolly (Mar 12, 2019)

*President Lincoln with Major General McClernand and Allan Pinkerton at Antietam in 1862. 





*


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## hollydolly (Mar 12, 2019)

*Johann Strauss II & Johannes Brahms - Bad Ischl, Austria - 1894*








*Building the Statue of Liberty, Paris, 1881.*

Whitby, Northern England  fisherman 1900


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## hollydolly (Mar 12, 2019)




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## Keesha (Mar 12, 2019)

Some great photos. Look how skinny Elizabeth Taylor is. 
The last photo doesn’t seem to show up.


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## hollydolly (Mar 12, 2019)

Yes I couldn't get that last photo to upload for some odd reason....

Great photos aren't they?


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## Pappy (Mar 12, 2019)

I love these Holly. Now if they could only talk we could learn so much.


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## Ronni (Mar 12, 2019)

I love photos like these!!!  

I enlarged the unemployed lumber worker and his wife, trying to see what the tattoo on his arm was.  It just looks like numbers.  I wonder why?


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## Lara (Mar 12, 2019)

These are incredible photos, holly. Each of the photos has a story to tell and I could stare and imagine all day what the stories might be. I would like to imagine that both the lumber worker and his wife work separate jobs. They both stay at the husband's lumber camp on the wife's days off. She works in town and lives there working in a sewing factory. She makes her own clothes as many did in those days. And I'll bet the husband cleans up quite nicely when he stays with her in town on his off days.

My imagination is drawing a blank on the tattoo. Unless he's a prisoner and if he bolts from the lumber camp, the numbered tattoo will serve as identification if he's caught. I'll bet Meanderer can find the story behind this photo. He has magical powers for that sort of thing. The photo caption says he's an unemployed lumber worker though so that would shoot holes in the prisoner theory.


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## hollydolly (Mar 12, 2019)

I agree Ladies... I have the same thoughts and imaginations as you all when it comes to Vintage pictures and wondering about the backgrounds and lifestyles , and isn't it interesting everyone noticed the lumber worker..most..

I haven't a clue about the number tattooed either..I did think he might have been  a prison inmate number but I don't think it would be so neat!!


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## RadishRose (Mar 12, 2019)

Holly, I so enjoyed these photos! I notice so much more when they are colorized so well as these have been.

I have the Shorpy Gordonton NC July 1939 country store, and I love it, but I only have the B&W. Seeing it colorized was a thrill.

Joan Crawford; did you know her real name was Lucille LeSeur? 

Amazing to see Times Square with a few buildings still not covered in neon signs! 

The lumber worker and his wife I had seen before in B&W, but never noticed the tattoo. It was 1939. Could he have been escaped from a Nazi concentration camp? I'm not aware if American prisoners were tattooed.

Anyway, I enjoyed them, thanks!


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## hollydolly (Mar 13, 2019)

I too  thought about the concentration camp angle as a possibility  RR.. ..but then I dismissed it because I think the Nazi's tattoed the numbers on the forearm only , however I'm very prepared to be corrected..

I didn't know JC's name was French, thanks for that little nugget, 

..and I so agree, we do notice so much more in a colour photo than in B&W, and you know despite the technology today which gives us fantastic shots, there's a rawness about these pictures which somehow gives them so much more clarity..


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## Tommy (Mar 13, 2019)

The tattoo format appeared to me to be that of a Social Security number.  I searched online and came up with a site that shows it as being:

    *SSA*
535-07-5248

It says that the number belonged to Thomas Cave, who was born in July 1912 and died in 1980 in Portland, OR.

Ya' know, I read it on the internet so it MUST be true.


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## -Oy- (Mar 13, 2019)

This is fabulous stuff and what a skill it is to do this!!!!


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## hollydolly (Mar 13, 2019)

Tommy said:


> The tattoo format appeared to me to be that of a Social Security number.  I searched online and came up with a site that shows it as being:
> 
> *SSA*
> 535-07-5248
> ...



Oh wow, I hope that's true....


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## RadishRose (Mar 13, 2019)

Tommy said:


> The tattoo format appeared to me to be that of a Social Security number.  I searched online and came up with a site that shows it as being:
> 
> *SSA*
> 535-07-5248
> ...



It must be, Tommy, I couldn't read the SSA part but that could stand for Social Security Administration.


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## RadishRose (Mar 13, 2019)

hollydolly said:


> I too  thought about the concentration camp angle as a possibility  RR.. ..but then I dismissed it because I think the Nazi's tattoed the numbers on the forearm only , however I'm very prepared to be corrected..
> 
> I didn't know JC's name was French, thanks for that little nugget,
> 
> ..and I so agree, we do notice so much more in a colour photo than in B&W, and you know despite the technology today which gives us fantastic shots, there's a rawness about these pictures which somehow gives them so much more clarity..



Holly, I just remembered something about a neighbor I had long ago. I'd never met her, but another neighbor told me she had been rescued from a concentration camp in her youth and that she had a tattoo of numbers on her forearm, so it is as you said.


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## hollydolly (Mar 13, 2019)

-Oy- said:


> This is fabulous stuff and what a skill it is to do this!!!!


 Yes it's a skill I'd love to have the ability to do...


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## hollydolly (Mar 13, 2019)

RadishRose said:


> Holly, I just remembered something about a neighbor I had long ago. I'd never met her, but another neighbor told me she had been rescued from a concentration camp in her youth and that she had a tattoo of numbers on her forearm, so it is as you said.



I've seen so many documentaries on Tv of the survivors of concentration camps and they're tattoos were always on the fore-arm.. so I think that must have been the case for every German  prisoner of war...

I'm loving this investigation by Tommy.. it makes sense as you say RR..that the SSA would stand for what you say..

I wonder if people routinely did this in the USA during the depression...


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## hollydolly (Mar 13, 2019)




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## hollydolly (Mar 13, 2019)

*Name:*	Thomas U Cave
*Name (Original):*	CAVE THOMAS U
*Event Type:*	Military Service
*Event Date:*	29 Oct 1942
*Term of Enlistment:* 	Enlistment for the duration of the War or other emergency, plus six  months, subject to the discretion of the President or otherwise  according to law
*Event Place:*	Portland, Oregon, United States
*Race:*	White
*Citizenship Status:*	citizen
*Birth Year:*	1912
*Birthplace:*	OREGON
*Education Level:*	Grammar school
*Marital Status:*	Divorced, with dependents
*Military Rank:*	Private
*Army Branch:*	Branch Immaterial - Warrant Officers, USA
*Army Component:*	Selectees (Enlisted Men)
*Source Reference:*	Civil Life
*Serial Number:*	39320789
*Affiliate ARC Identifier:*	1263923
*Box Film Number:*	14216.187
---------------------------------------------


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## hollydolly (Mar 13, 2019)

OH my lord..we're turning into little detectives.. wouldn't it be great if some of his descendent saw this, and updated the history of their father or grandfather...


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## hollydolly (Mar 13, 2019)

Oregon,  August 1939. Unemployed lumber worker goes with his wife to the bean  harvest. Note Social Security number tattooed on his arm. A public  records search shows that 535-07-5248 belonged to one Thomas Cave, born  July 1912, died in 1980 in Portland. Which would make him 27 years old  when this picture was taken by Dorothea Lange.​A  resident of Klamath Falls, Ore., Thomas U. Cave and his wife had fallen  on hard times when Lange encountered them. That year, they had  collectively worked a total of 52 weeks and earned $550. The couple was  the only household who rented a small flat on Frieda Avenue ($12 a  month). And now Thomas Cave found himself without a job. They were both  twenty-seven at the time.
​


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## hollydolly (Mar 13, 2019)

He was born on July 2, 1912 and died June  4, 1980. He was a Sergeant in WWII. His wife's name was Ann Kathryn  Cave. She was born in January 23, 1916 and died on February 18, 2000.They are both buried at Willamette National Cemetery in Portland, OR.
*Edit*  - Okay so some new information: He enlisted in the Army in 1942 and his  status at that time was "Divorced." He later remarried Ann Kathryn, so  the woman in that photo isn't Ann Kathryn. It's actually his first wife,  Vivian, whom he was still married to in 1940. The woman in this photo  is Vivian.
*Edit 2*  - So, per census records he was living in Shasta, OR in 1940 and was a  truck driver with an 8th grade education. Vivian was a fruit picker on a  farm. Thomas and Ann (his second wife) had a daughter Juanita on  September 13, 1949. Why that's interesting is because census records  have a Tillman T Cave and his sister Juanita with parents Tillman B and  Sarah N Cave in a farm in Buckham, OR.
When  searching for Tillman Cave there's a 1940 census record for Benjamin T  and Sadie N Cave in Buckham, OR in 1918 with a WW1 draft registration  for Tilman B. Then a 1930 census record for them in Los Angeles, CA,  then a 1940 census record for them in Portland.
How  these separate names come together is: there's a 1934 marriage record  of Tillman T.U. Cave to a Vivian Couture, witnessed by Benjamin Cave and  Sadie Cave in Multnomah County, OR. So Benjamin and Sadie (Sarah) were  his parents and he named his daughter with his second wife after his  sister, Juanita.


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## hollydolly (Mar 13, 2019)

It seems that it was actively encouraged to have your SS number tattooed on back in those days..according to this article...

[This photo by Lange may shed some light.  According to Tiffany West, a historical researcher, the US government  stressed the "outright necessity" of carriers to know their numbers. Two  tattoo artists, Red Gibbons and Sailor Walter, told a Portland  newspaper in 1937 that they were working overtime in their Burnside  Street shop tattooing SSNs "on the arms and legs of folks who didn't  want to be caught without their numbers."](https://www.reddit.com/r/ColorizedH...t_1939_unemployed_lumber_worker_goes/dtosr9p/)​


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## Lara (Mar 13, 2019)

My question was "WHY did they tattoo SS numbers on people's arms?" so I googled that and got this:

The letters are SSA not SSN. They stand for Social Security Administration. SSN did not become a common acronym until after World War II. The first SSNs were issued in 1935, not long before this picture [the one Holly posted of Thomas Cave]. The New Deal agencies were referred to back then as “the alphabet agencies” and then “alphabet soup.” For example, Lange, a photographer working for the RA, had previously worked for FERA (forerunner of today’s FEMA) and later the FSA, took the picture under the auspices of the USDA. Before the New Deal, government was much smaller, and, saving the USDA, these “alphabetics” (as they were also called) did not exist.

Social security numbers were tattooed on Americans under Roosevelt’s socialism before tattoos were used in Germany under the National Socialist German Workers Party.http://rexcurry.net/tattoos.html

This photograph [Thomas Cave]shows a tattooed social security number (SS number) on an American around 1939. The tattoo reads “SSA 535-07-5248.” http://rexcurry.net/social-security-number-tattoo3.jpg

The tattooed American was probably [hmmm, "probably" is not factual] part of a quasi-military socialist camp program in the USA, such as the Civilian Conservation Corps or a subsistence farming community created by the federal police state. For more on the Civilian Conservation Corps see http://rexcurry.net/bookchapter5a1.html

For more information about subsistence farming programs see http://rexcurry.net/socialism-roosevelt.html

In 1933, Franklin Delano Roosevelt imposed the Civilian Conservation Corps and created camps consistent with the dogma of military socialism touted by Edward Bellamy and Francis Bellamy (author of the “Pledge of Allegiance,” the origin of the stiff-arm salute adopted later under German National Socialism). Hitler at first remarked admiringly about Roosevelt’s “dynamic” leadership. http://rexcurry.net/bookchapter5a1.html

The American numbering program was known as the “social security” program, or SS program. The German National Socialist tattoo program was operated by the SS division. The German SS division used stylized alphabetical symbolism for its logo, similar to the crossed S-letters in the swastika (Hakenkreuz or hooked cross) for “socialism” under the National Socialist German Workers Party. See the work of the symbologist Dr. Rex Curry (author of “Swastika Secrets”).
http://rexcurry.net/book1a1contents-swastika.html

During the Holocaust, concentration camp prisoners received tattoos only at one location, the Auschwitz concentration camp complex, which consisted of Auschwitz I (Main Camp), Auschwitz II (Auschwitz-Birkenau), and Auschwitz III (Monowitz and the subcamps).
It was part of the Wholecaust (of which the Holocaust was a part): ~20 million slaughtered under the National Socialist German Workers Party; ~60 million under the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics; ~50 million under the Peoples Republic of China.  http://rexcurry.net/tattoos.html

According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the SS authorities under German National Socialism marked prisoners who were in the infirmary or who were to be executed with their camp serial number across the chest with indelible ink. As prisoners were executed or died in other ways, their clothing bearing the camp serial number was removed. Given the mortality rate at the camp and practice of removing clothing, there was no way to identify the bodies after the clothing was removed. Hence, the SS authorities introduced the practice of tattooing in order to identify the bodies of registered prisoners who had died, according to http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10007056Originally, a special metal stamp, holding interchangeable numbers made up of needles approximately one centimeter long was used. The entire serial number was punched in one blow onto the prisoner’s left upper chest. Ink was then rubbed into the bleeding wound.
When the metal stamp method proved impractical, a single-needle device was introduced, which pierced the outlines of the serial-number digits onto the skin. The site of the tattoo was changed to the outer side of the left forearm. However, prisoners from several transports in 1943 had their numbers tattooed on the inner side of their left upper forearms. Tattooing was generally performed during registration when each prisoner was assigned a camp serial number. Since prisoners sent directly to the gas chambers were never issued numbers, they were never tattooed.
Tattooing was introduced at Auschwitz in the autumn of 1941. Thousands of prisoners of war (POWs) arrived at the camp from the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (two years earlier the Soviet socialists had been allies with German socialists at the beginning of WWII and the invasion of Poland in a pact to divide up Europr). Thousands of Soviet socialist prisoners rapidly died at the camp. The SS authorities began to tattoo the prisoners for identification purposes. At Auschwitz II (Birkenau), the SS staff introduced the practice of tattooing in March 1942 to keep up with the identification of large numbers of prisoners who arrived, sickened, and died quickly. By that time, the majority of registered prisoners in the Auschwitz complex were Jews. In the spring of 1943, the SS authorities throughout the entire Auschwitz complex adopted the practice of tattooing almost all previously registered and newly arrived prisoners, including female prisoners. Exceptions to this practice were prisoners of German nationality and “reeducation prisoners,” who were held in a separate compound. “Reeducation prisoners,” or “labor-education prisoners,” were non-Jewish persons of virtually all European nationalities (but at Auschwitz primarily Germans, Czechs, Poles, and Soviet civilians) who had run afoul of the harsh labor discipline imposed on civilian laborers in areas under German control.


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## hollydolly (Mar 13, 2019)

Incredible where one little picture send us isn't it?...thanks for that Lara... fascinating stuff!!


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## RadishRose (Mar 13, 2019)

Holy cats! I have to read you lady's posts again! And then again.

One thing that jumps out at me is it's nutty to draw any correlation of SS (Social Security number) and German SS troops.  But yes, I have to read it all again.

What a fascinating journey.


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## RadishRose (Mar 13, 2019)

hollydolly said:


> OH my lord..we're turning into little detectives.. wouldn't it be great if some of his descendent saw this, and updated the history of their father or grandfather...



That would truly be something genuinely worthy of the term "awesome" !


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