Thanks. The clothes are beautiful

I certainly enjoyed them. Thanks. What a fascinating story.

She had such a tiny waist! What an interesting and sad story you are discovering.

The hats alone are amazing!

Gorgeous. It's bittersweet to think how sad she must have been in some of those pictures.

When I was a kid I was fascinated with this time period and the clothing women wore. I wanted to be able to dress like that. But oh what a pain that must have been to wear those heavy dresses and all those underthings, especially in the summer without air conditioning.

The clothes are beautiful, but ditto Sleeperblues about the hardship of wearing them. It's no wonder women got "the vapors."

A hundred years from now, women will probably look at pictures of our clothes and wonder how we could possibly have worn them. I can't imagine what they'll be wearing then.....just as Addie couldn't have envisioned our jeans and sweatshirts. :-)

I'm impressed that you have ANY photos from that time period (pre-1900's!!) and they are in such good shape. I especially love the one that she is laughing in-no one ever smiled in photos back then.

I am working on a similar project for Jan, and she has dug out old family photos from as far back as 1892, however one can not begin to really appreciate those photos until you understand the early history of photography itself.

Commercial photography had begun back in the late 1830's but in those days it was a very dangerous process that was only done by professional photographers.

In 1888 George Eastman, founder of Eastman Kodak, developed roll film and produced a simple box camera that came preloaded with a roll of 20 exposures. For a mere $5 anyone could buy a camera, snap the photos, then return the camera to Eastman Kodak Labs at Rochester, NY, where the film was processed & printed. The camera was then reloaded at the factory and your prints and camera were returned, all for the paultry sum of $1.50, but keep in mind that in the 1890's top paid factory workers were only making $1.50 a day, for a 10hour day.

The idea of making the film with a paper backing so the operator could load the film and just send the roll of film back for processing did not begin until Kodak introduced the "Kodak Brownie" in 1901.

In those days there were no aperture or shutter speed adjustments and the ISO value was determined by the type of film used. Basically all they could do was take snapshots outdoors in direct sunlight.

What I find most amazing is how little those photos have faded over the years.

Last night I went to bed thinking. If she was shot, wouldn't there have been blood and blood splatter? Sorry to be so graphic. Wouldn't house maids or other servants been asked to clean that up, room, bed clothes,ect. He surely wouldn't have done all that himself. Somebody in the house KNEW something. And saying that, it's interesting Elsie's daughter(?)remembers her mother stating "Enoch killed Addie". Enoch must have silenced the entire household.

Schoolhouse, you're right. A gunshot would have awakened the entire household. I believe the murder was premeditated, and I believe that Enoch cleared out the house that night - sending his two daughters and his two servants away.

I also think that - if Addie was shot - that he'd re-call one of the servants to clean up the mess.

If your employer is a powerful, wealthy, prestigious man and he's standing over the form of his young, beautiful and newly-dead wife and then he turns to you and says, "If you ever tell anyone about this, I will kill you," YOU WOULD BELIEVE HIM.

These servants were immigrant girls from Germany. Young, single, poor and far from hearth and home, they were as powerless as anyone could be in early 20th Century America.

I'm sure he threatened them or bribed them or both.

After my most recent trip to Lake Mills, we found incontrovertible evidence showing that the death certificate was indeed falsified. That's the smoking gun.

It's quite a story.

This is the 1900 census, showing two servants, Martha Drager and Mary Frey (last two lines above). They were 19 and 29. By the time of the 1905 Wisconsin state census, they were both gone, replaced by two new immigrant girls from Germany, ages 17 and 19.

Enoch liked 'em young.

I'd love to know what happened to Mary and Martha.

Here is a link that might be useful: The smoking gun

Very, very interesting. But I have to ask, was your family affluent?

Where is the part about how you went from arsenic poisoning to being shot?

I believe (or suspect) that he tried to kill her with arsenic first, and when that failed, he killed her outright (allegedly with a gun).

If you look at the photos below, you'll notice that her hairline has receded dramatically, and it appears (hard to know for sure) that her eyebrows are thinner or gone.

The legend (according to old family in the area) was that he tried to poison her first, and when that didn't work, he shot her in the face (or head), killing her instantly.

These two photos show Addie five years apart. The first one was her wedding day (she was 24) and the second one she was 29 (shortly before her death).

Life with Enoch was hard.

Close-up of the hairline:

Here is a link that might be useful: Addie and arsenic

I think the angle of her head in each shot does a lot for the receding hairline illusion. The first picture, she's looking straight in the camera and in the second, her head is tilted back a good amount. Just a thought.

Returning to the clothes--someone remarked on her small waistline. Remember, she was tightly laced into a corset. No respectable woman went w/o one!

I love all the photos, especially the hats. I saw a photo of my Grandmother (born 1895) taken in the 1920's or 30's. She had been widowed twice (no murder stories here). In the photo, her hair was in a Gibson Girl bun (she was no beauty, but her second husband had money). She learned to drive a car in the 1930's and was often seen driving, unusual for a woman in those days. She also turned her home into a boarding house to make ends meet and raise her daughter (my Mom) after 2nd husband died. Every weekend she "visited" her two dead husbands at the cemetery. My Mother grew up with a fear and dread of cemeteries, which is why she was cremated.