BY CRAIG WENZEL

The photograph above was one of the glass plate negatives that Marvin brought to the True Dakotan last week. We no longer have equipment to produce photographs like this –or do we? I decided to give this nice plate a try with today’s photograph digital scanners and the computer program, Adobe Photoshop.

After a few attempts, the scanner picked up enough of the image on the plate to give us some hope. But the image was still in the negative form. Pushing nearly every button available in the “Image” area of Photoshop, I finally arrived at the “Invert” button. With nothing to lose, I clicked on Invert and presto: the negative magically turned into a positive black and white photograph.

Suddenly there were approximately 40 former Wessington Springs residents looking at what appeared to be a spanking new Cadillac.

 

Driver in the photograph turns out to be the “Springs Fat Man”

 

The carload of people in the old automobile were apparently engaged in some sort of a festive occasion, by the looks of the eight American flags in the photograph it was probably a Fourth of July parade.

The sign on the building that is partially shown on the left side of the photograph has the letters “ICAN” (partially spelling True Republican) and “H.A. Short, Proprietor” lettered on it. Of course of one our early newspaper predecessors was the “Wessington Springs True Republican”, which was located next door to the “Ideal Restaurant”, which stood where the Jerauld County Heritage Center is now located. A quick check in N.J. Dunham’s “A History of Jerauld County, South Dakota” shows that L.S. DuBois sold the newspaper to H.A. Short in September-1908. Fred Dunham’s “A History of Wessington Springs, South Dakota 1909-1961″ says H.A. Short sold the “True Republican” to H.C. Lounsberry in the fall of 1910.

So the photograph was most likely taken on the Fourth of July, in either 1909 or 1910.

Fred Dunham noted the advent of the automobile with a note in his book. “1909: Automobiles began to be plentiful on the roads of the County and as a result scarcely a day passed that there was not a serious run-a-way by teams driving along the highways. Many injuries resulted and much loss of property.”

Duke spotted the final clue in the glass negative. The letters “L.N. Nesselroad, Dry Goods & Groceries” are printed on a sign on the Cadillac. Page 319 of Fred Dunham’s history book has a photograph of L.N. Nesselroad –yup, that’s him behind the wheel of the Caddy.

 

 

PHOTO REPRINTED FROM WESSINGTON SPRINGS

DIAMOND JUBILEE SPECIAL BOOKLET – 1957

L.N. Nesselroad is pictured on the left with Rev. J.M. Tibbets in the center. The “clown” on the right is unidentified, but appears to be the same heavy-set friend of Nesselroad that appears in the backseat of the glass plate negative photograph. Mrs. Glen Eddy contributed the photograph to the Independent prior to the printing of the Diamond Jubilee (yellow covered booklet) in 1957. “I think the picture was taken sometime in 1907 and was sent to my folks by some friends who lived near Templeton church and was sent to us before we moved here in 1908,” she said. The occasion was an early Old Settler’s picnic.