This week, we're observing the upcoming holiday (and all the accompanying labor in the kitchen) ...

Black and white photograph of an older woman removing a turkey from an oven

This week, we're observing the upcoming holiday (and all the accompanying labor in the kitchen) with this ca. 1932 photograph from our Edward J.S. Seal photographic reproductions (Accession 1971.336) collections.

Edward James Shimer Seal (1896-1955) was a farmer and photographer. The son of Howard Ellsworth Seal (1859-1940) and Annie Lincoln Shimer Seal (1864-1920), he grew up on Locust Knoll Farm in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania. Later in his life, Seal owned Wilmington Camera Shop in Wilmington, Delaware. The woman in this photograph, taken at the family homestead on Locust Knoll Farm, is his sister-in-law Estelle, who married his brother William in 1914.

This collection at Hagley Library features over 300 photographs taken by him or other friends and family members during the first half of the twentieth century. Many of these images offer a glimpse into family and town life in Chadds Ford and Wilmington, Delaware during the 1920s and 1930s.

The images feature Seal family members, friends, neighbors, and employees. Other subjects include the 1939 World's Fair in New York, the artists N.C. and Andrew Wyeth, and local bridges and roads. To view this collection online now in our Digital Archive, click here.