Album page: family photographs of Samuel G. FitzSimons and the Charlotte Military Academy boy, with note on letter from Ellie's Dad
Book 1, Page 312 ·1870–1930
Transcription
Photograph captions (clockwise from top-left, in cursive ink)
Top-left small cabinet portrait (young man in brass-button uniform):
Samuel Gaillard F.S. Charlotte Military Academy
Top-centre large oval portrait (moustachioed man, dark coat) — pencilled caption beneath the mount:
Sam
Top-right large studio portrait (woman in dark high-collared dress); photographer’s imprint at base of card reads Photo Art Parlors, 1147½ Broad St., Cor. 12th, Columbia, S.C.:
Mary Anne Perry — wife of S. G. F. Simons
Middle-left small portrait (standing fair-haired girl in a white dress):
Amy F.S.
Middle small portrait (young child, ¾ length, in a pale dress):
Thomas Pocher F.S. (died in infancy)
Middle small portrait (child’s head and shoulders, sailor collar):
[illegible] F. S.
Middle small portrait (boy in sailor-style outfit):
Sam F. S. (Palele)
Middle snapshot (white clapboard house with deep porch):
“Mt. Hope” — Willtown — S.C. Home of Samuel FitzSimons
Lower-left snapshot (four figures seated on a porch):
Pickens — Bub — Ted — Clara — Dad
Lower-centre interior snapshot (study or library with two men, desk, books, globes, flowers); pencil caption on two lines beneath:
Samuel FitzSimons — his wife Mary Ann — their daughter Amy Perry F.S. Taken in dining room at “Mount Hope”.
Lower-right landscape snapshot (trees and clearing opening on water):
View of river from Mt. Hope.
Mounted handwritten note (folded sheet, right-centre, in cursive ink)
Letter from Ellie to Dad after hearing of his illness. Letter from Mr. Nat Barnwell to Ellie when Dad died
Lower-centre newspaper clipping fragment
S. G. FitzSimons
To The News and Courier. The death of Samuel [Gaillard] FitzSimons at his home, W[hite] Bluff, St. Paul’s parish, and burial of his body at M[agnolia] cemetery, Charleston, on [the] 19th October, 1930, leads [those who] knew him, and learned his [worth] even in his early days, to [pay] tribute to his memory. As [a cadet] at Charlotte Military I[nstitute] he made [an im]pression upon his fellow[s] [so deep] that the passage of the y[ears has] not destroyed. His lovable and cheery [disposi]tion endeared him to his [friends], and his upright character [and his] inspired [respect] and confidence. The associates of his la[ter life] know now how the chara[cteristics of] his youth were continued to the end. This world is truly a world [to be] deplored — for life involves change. Yet in this a [changeful] character may last, and the m[em]ory of it persists in the m[inds of] others. “Friends depart, and memo[ry takes] them. To their caverns, pure and d[eep.]” R. [G. T.] Charleston, October 21.
AI Notes
Album page laid out with several photographs, a mounted handwritten note in ink, and a small newspaper obituary clipping at lower centre. Upper row, left to right: a small cabinet-style portrait of a young man in a uniform with brass buttons, captioned ‘Samuel Gaillard F.S. — Charlotte Military Academy’; a large oval-mounted bust portrait of a moustachioed man in a dark coat (captioned ‘Sam’); a large studio cabinet card of a young woman in a high-collared dark dress (captioned ‘Mary Anne Perry — wife of S. G. F. Simons’), with photographer’s imprint ‘Photo Art Parlors, 1147½ Broad St., Cor. 12th, Columbia, S.C.’ Middle row: a small portrait of a standing fair-haired girl in a white dress, captioned ‘Amy F.S.’ (the compiler Amy Ann Perry FitzSimons as a child); a small portrait of a young child captioned ‘Thomas Pocher F.S. (died in infancy)’; an unidentified child portrait with only ‘[illegible] F. S.’ legible; a small head-and-shoulders portrait of a boy in a sailor-style outfit captioned ‘Sam F. S. (Palele)’; a snapshot view of a clapboard plantation-style house with a wide porch, captioned ‘“Mt. Hope” — Willtown — S.C. / Home of Samuel FitzSimons’; and a mounted handwritten note on a folded sheet at right (‘Letter from Ellie to Dad after hearing of his illness. / Letter from Mr. Nat Barnwell to Ellie when Dad died’). Bottom row: a snapshot of a porch with seated figures (captioned ‘Pickens — Bub — Ted — Clara — Dad’); a large interior snapshot of a study/dining room at Mt. Hope showing Samuel FitzSimons, his wife Mary Ann, and their daughter Amy Perry F.S.; a small newspaper obituary fragment headed ‘S. G. FitzSimons’, dated Charleston, October 21, recording Samuel’s death on 19 October 1930 at White Bluff, St. Paul’s parish, and burial at Magnolia Cemetery, Charleston; and a landscape snapshot of trees with a clearing at right (‘View of river from Mt. Hope’).
Bracketed words are editorial supplements where the clipping is torn or foxed at the column edge; the death date 19 October 1930 anchors the page in time.
Samuel Gaillard FitzSimons (1856–1930) is the album compiler’s father: Mt. Hope at Willtown Bluff on the Edisto was her childhood home, and the “Amy F.S.” in the standing-girl portrait above is the compiler herself as a child. Samuel was the second son of Dr. Christopher FitzSimons (3rd) (1828–1866, killed in the Moss Grove tornado; see pages 277 and 279) and Susan Milliken Barker; he was ten when his father died. The compiler’s mother is Mary Anne Perry (the studio portrait), often called “Minnie” in family letters.