An Interesting Exercise in Dating and Comparing a Photograph

Dating and Comparing My Grandfather's Photo

The following photograph is of my Grandfather when he was County Treasurer of Bent County, Colorado.  I know from other research that he served in that position from 1932 until around 1940.  

Arthur Dean--Bent County, CO Treasurer

From blow ups of the photo I can see that the calendar on the wall shows November 30 on a Tuesday.  By checking with Google, I found out that would have occurred in 1937 or 1948 (as well as several others years that aren't relevant).  We also see a photo of FDR, who was, presumably, President at the time.  He was President from 1933-1945; thus, the date of the photo was most likely 1937.  As you can see below, we didn't have to go through that exercise as someone had, surprisingly, marked the date!  However, had we not know the date, we could have determined the year from the calendar.

In 2005, I was in Las Animas for my 50th High School reunion (yes, I am that old!) and we took a tour of the newly renovated Court House.  In one of the unused offices in the basement I noticed an interesting desk that had been refurbished.  Below is the photo.

  

Notice any similarities?  I think it is the same desk my grandfather was sitting at in 1937, when he was County Treasurer, albeit, not as cluttered!  Any of you still have one of those neat old roll-top desks?  We know they have one in the Bent County Courthouse that is at least 76 years old!

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Reminder--Back Up Your Genealogy (and other) Computer Data

It is the 1st of the month and in accordance with a tradition started by Dick Eastman (and/or perhaps others), it is time to back up all your data.  I have a separate hard drive and then I back up daily to Mozy, which is a server "in the cloud".  I have decided it is time to get a new remote hard drive, as mine is at least 5 or 6 years old.  Not only is it only a couple hundred gigabytes; but it doesn't have programmable backup times.  For less than $100 I can get a 1.5 to 2 TB hard drive with internal software that allows me to program daily automatic back ups.  Additionally, I am flirting with problems by still using a 5-6 year old piece of digital equipment.  If you haven't already, I encourage you to take a look at your procedures to ensure you have an up-to-date back-up plan.