Recently discovered photo album shines new light upon old mansion

Historic image of J.J. Cruikshank Jr., as he prepares to trim the vines on his house. Photo contributed by Warren Bittner and Juan Ruiz.

MARY LOU MONTGOMERY

J.J. Cruikshank Jr., the catalyst and financier behind Hannibal’s famed hilltop landmark, Rockcliffe Mansion, is easily recognizable in a rare photograph recently returned to Hannibal.

Titled “Crooky ready to trim the vines,” the image is contained within a scrapbook believed to have been kept during the years of 1908-1914 by Josephine, Cruikshank’s youngest daughter, born in 1894.

Mr. Cruikshank is casually posed with a pair of shears in his right hand and a gloved left hand, and seated next to a wooden column upon the grand home’s front porch.

He appears to be wearing a Gadsby-style hat, and a suit adorned with a loose handkerchief in his coat’s breast pocket.

This photo represents just one of many images, unique to Hannibal, contained within the scrapbook.

Unique find

Scott Lovasco, an antiques and fine arts dealer on the north shore of Massachusetts, was in possession of the scrapbook, which he obtained a few years ago at an estate sale in Brookline, MA.

He initially set aside the scrapbook for later inspection. When he did study the pages, he realized the album’s possible historic significance.

“It was in a box of antique books that I purchased for $40,” he said via an email message.  In addition to the photos of the Cruikshank family, the album also contained unpublished photos of the Wright Brothers, he said, whose fame with the airplane was rising during that same era.

“I ended up posting (the album)  on Ebay,” Lovasco said, where it was subsequently seen by Mark Twain Chapman of Mark Twain Construction of Boonville, Ind. Chapman is currently doing work on the mansion’s observatory roof.

Chapman brought the online auction to the attention of Warren Bittner and Juan Ruiz, Rockcliffe’s owners, who in turn reached out to Lovasco.

By the time that Warren and Juan learned of the scrapbook’s existence, the auction was just five or six days out.

“I was contacted by the archive department of Rockcliffe Mansion,” Lovasco said. “I could tell they were very excited about the album and I was really hoping they would be the high bidders.”

Even though the end of the auction was at hand, Warren and Juan found it necessary to make a trip to Alabama, in order to pick up a load of flooring to be installed in the mansion’s observatory.

En route, as the close of the auction neared, they stopped at a Starbucks in order to monitor the bidding. “We put in the highest bid we could. The price went up greatly at the last moment … and we won,” Warren said.

They waited a week for the album to arrive in the mail.

While scanning the photos, they have studied the images.  “All those little things, as we study photographs we learn more and more.”

For example, “We happened to come across one of Helen (Cruikshank Knighton) sitting on a bench out in the garden.

“In 2019,” Warren said, “we purchased back (from the family) a significant amount of furnishing. One of the things that was offered to us was as iron garden bench. The granddaughter of Louise said her mother told her it came from Rockcliffe,” but there was no documentation. “We were hesitant, but we bought it, and later we found a reference to it in a journal. Now we have a photo of it.

“The real overarching theme that I got from these pictures,” Warren said, “is we have a totally new perspective on how the family was living in the mansion, 10 years after it was built; completely different than what we imagined.

“There were vines,” on the house when Mr. Cruikshank was alive. “I thought that was the result of neglect after Mr. Cruikshank passed. But that’s what it looked like when he lived there.”

That surprised Warren, knowing that vines can be detrimental to wood surfaces.

“The columns and porches are made of wood. The roots of the vines start grabbing into the wood.”

Even though he now realizes that the vines were of Mr. Cruikshank’s choosing, “I’m not replacing the vines,” Warren said, “Because they are so destructive.”

Besides, “once the vines go up, you can’t see what’s behind the vines” architecturally.

Warren also noted the progression of time as shown in the photos, “You see horses and buggies, and later in the album you see an automobile. The maid, a colored woman, Carolina. You don’t often see that. Thankfully, Josephine wrote below the photos,”  Warren said, including her reference to Mr. Cruikshank as “Crooky.”

“That’s what’s written.”

“Every year we learn so much more; it is exponential. If you don’t have certain knowledge, you can’t appreciate the facts.

“As you gain more knowledge, you gain a bigger appreciation for what is going on.”

Warren described some of the photos as “unbelievable. The photos show details of the mansion that we had never before seen.”

At the front of the album, Josephine placed a photo of what the southeast porch looked like, all furnished.

“That porch burned off in 1959. Her album has a bunch of photos of the front porch, including the area that burned off; but we did not have a photograph showing it furnished, with the wicker furniture. At end of the album she showed a large photograph of the front of the mansion, in May 1908. Both side porches are covered with vines.”

Family connection

Warren and Juan have shared the photo images from the album with some of the Cruikshank descendants.

John Warren, a descendant of Gladys, who lives in Akeley, Minn., said that he is struck by images in the photos that he has never seen before.

“All the photos we’ve seen of the people in Hannibal tend to be people we would know; like our grandmother, Gladys, or Aunt Helen and Louise. But we never knew Josephine (the youngest sister.) She lived on the east coast. I never knew much about her or her family, nor did my sisters.”

Family

John J. Cruikshank Jr. 1837-1924

Annie Louise Hart Cruikshank (second wife) 1863-1937

Gladys Cruikshank Warren 1887-1961

Louise Cruikshank Logan 1890-1990

Helen Cruikshank Knighton 1892-1987

Josephine Cruikshank Kessler 1894-1975.

Mary Lou Montgomery, Suburban Newspapers of America Editor of the Year, Dailies, 2010, retired as editor of the Hannibal, Mo., Courier-Post in 2014. She researches and writes narrative-style stories about the people who served as building blocks for this region’s foundation. Books available on amazon.com by this author include: “The Notorious Madam Shaw,” “Pioneers in Medicine from Northeast Missouri,” “Hannibal’s ‘West End,’” “Oakwood: West of Hannibal,” “St. Mary’s Avenue District,” and “Live, on stage ion Hannibal 1879: ‘H.M.S. Pinafore.’” Montgomery can be reached at montgomery.editor@yahoo.com Her collective works can be found at www.maryloumontgomery.com