|
If you are Tim Mask, please contact me through the contact form again. I got your message but the email address was garbled. I'm not sure if my contact form ate the domain or not, everything after the @ sign was gone.
Click Here to see photo.
This photograph was among those in our family collection. A group of post card photographs I attribute to my grandfather Frank Samuel Knoblock includes this image of an early monoplane. The design appears to be derived from a Bleriot monoplane. It appears that you could purchase a "knock off" Bleriot fuselage from the Queen Aeroplane Company in New York City. Frank Cessna, by all accounts, favored a monoplane design while many others in the period favored a bi-plane design. All of the images of Cessna's aircraft appear to follow this same design from early models to the slightly more modern aircraft of 1917 and onward. Could it be an early or the first Cessna?
This photograph was most likely made in Kansas. It belongs to a group of postcard photographs all from Kansas depicting areas and people familiar to Frank S. Knoblock and related family.
We must weigh the evidence as to whether this photographic postcard was made by Frank Knoblock or was purchased by him or made or owned by some other person in the family.
Frank Knoblock opened his first photographic studio in Manhattan, Kansas circa 1911-1912. Frank S. Knoblock married Elma Ethel Barnum on 16 April 1916 in Paola, Kansas. They met in a photographic studio in Paola, Kansas near this time. Between 1911 and 1916, the Manhattan studio failed and they both attended the Lively photographic school in Tennessee.
Cessna started his aviation career in 1911 near Enid, Oklahoma. He built Wichita's first airplane in 1917.
Kingman County, Kansas is a significant location in our family history. The town of Rago in that county is where Frank V. Magill lived. It is where Herbert Barnum died while visiting at his uncle Frank V. Magill's home in 1910. Herbert Barnum was the brother of Ethel Barnum, wife of Frank S. Knoblock. This shows that Kingman and Rago were known to Knoblock and family connections existed there. Frank V. Magill died in Paola, Kansas in 1912. This suggests he may have moved in with family there as his health deteriorated. However, Frank was buried in Kingman. This suggests continued connections to the area, perhaps he did not sell his property or home and retained it there until his death despite residing in Paola.
Clyde Cessna got his start in aviation on a farm near Rago.
Photographers sought out images in the local community they thought might be popular and sell well. They would often make postcards of these post-1900 where in the previous century they might have sold a stereocard.
The photograph itself can be characterized as exhibiting slightly careless positioning on the print paper, fuzzy edges and the top left edge appears to show the edge of the negative in shadow. I would say it is a cut film negative. I think the negative curved up slightly during exposure, so perhaps this is an enlargement where the paper was not quite flat or a contact print with a slight curve to the film. Any "amateurishness" may help place this at the informal beginning of Knoblock's career. On the other hand, this might just be some fading on the edges of the emulsion during development. In any event, no attempt to use an easel or contact printing frame to keep the edges sharp was made.
The reverse shows an apparently rubber stamped standard post card address area. The stamp area is bordered by an "A Z O" pattern. This same stamping appears on other postcards in the same collection. At least one is known to be of family. It is a photograph of Samuel Burge and Josephine (Grubb) Burge with it is thought, Vivian Burge (possibly Mildred), standing in front of their house in Burlington, Kansas. Samuel Burge was Frank S. Knoblock's maternal grandfather.
Rago is 35 miles from Wichita.
Initial research uncovered the following references.
Clyde Cessna http://www.swaviator.com/html/issueJF04/clyde.html
For Clyde Cessna, persistence was father of invention http://www.kansas.com/mld/eagle/business/special_packages/legends/6829421.htm
Rago, Kansas http://skyways.lib.ks.us/towns/Rago/index.html
Kingman, Kansas http://www.swaviator.com/html/issueJF04/kingman.html (This article has additional information about Clyde Cessna's early days and the Cessna Homestead in Rago).
The file photo accompanying the Wichita Eagle article shows similarities to the aircraft in the postcard.
The SW Aviator article shows a photo of, I assume, Clyde Cessna wearing a hat exactly like the one shown worn by the pilot, peeking above the wing, in the postcard.
|
