Hell in the Headlights

I found another example of what is often referred to as a memorial cabinet card and I am confident that this one was not created as a mourning photo or funeral handout.  The sitter, Franklin Arthur Lee, was about twenty-four years old when he stood for this portrait.  I suspect he chose this scroll frame because it was new and interesting. Written on the reverse is “Franklin Arthur Lee, Mabel Vannoys (sic) Father.”

At the time this photo was taken, about 1890, Arthur was living with his parents and eight siblings in Twin Mounds township, Rook County, Kansas just 8 miles from the photography studio of George Locke in Stockton.

Arthur followed in the same profession as his father, farming.  He married in 1892 when he was 26 to Miss Ida McKim and they had two children, Harland and Mabel.  Ida died six years later and Arthur married Miss Anna Kern and had three more children: Gage, Beulah, and Harry.

1914 Model T Touring Car with Top

 

Tragically, Arthur was 54 years old when he was killed in an auto accident in Enid, Oklahoma.  On September 20, 1919, he was a passenger in his son Harland’s Ford Model T five-passenger touring car when about 10 p.m. they struck another automobile.  Arthur was the only fatality.  It was reported that neither car had lights and therefore the drivers couldn’t see each other.

Arthur was laid to rest in Blackwell Cemetery in Blackwell, Oklahoma.

Sources:
Census records
Find A Grave
Enid Events, Enid, Oklahmoa, Sept. 25, 1919
Kansas County marriage records