American Couple's Photo Album of 308 photographs in Revolutionary Mexico, Scenes from Veracruz, Ebano, and Cross Border Travel, 1912-1916

Mr. Mrs. St. Morris in Revolutionary Mexico

Photograph

[Mexican Revolution] “Mr. and Mrs. St. Morris” photograph album tracing an American couple’s movement from New York to Cuba and into Mexico during the unsettled years of the Mexican Revolution, ending with resettlement in Colorado by 1916 and anchored throughout by identified participants and a strong run of contemporaneous documentary inserts. The opening newspaper clipping announces that attorney C. St. Morris, a Spanish speaker and former law partner of V. T. Tustin, had secretly married Grace Harris of Detroit, with the marriage revealed three months later through New Year’s greetings sent from Mexico City. That account states that the couple spent two months on a honeymoon through Cuba and Mexico and were “obliged to remain aboard ship off Vera Cruz during hostilities,” reaching their Mexico City home only “after many trials,” immediately placing the album within disrupted civilian travel conditions on the Gulf route into revolutionary Mexico. From there, the album develops into a sustained personal record of American civilian residence in revolutionary Mexico, moving beyond honeymoon travel into documented daily life, disruption, and return. Rental documentation indicates that the couple remained there for roughly two years while Morris worked in Mexico, extending the album’s value beyond travel into prolonged residence during a period of civil unrest.

Mr. and Mrs. Morris photograph album. 1912-1916. New York, Cuba, Veracruz, Ebano, Mexico City, Tampico, Texas, and Denver. Album containing 308 photographs, 8 of which are real photo postcards, and 35 pieces of ephemera, including clipped newspaper accounts, a typed passenger list, printed and manuscript items, membership documents, a rental receipt, a telegram, consular correspondence, and later civic papers. The second page consists of photographs of the newly married couple, including a posed image in which Mr. Morris smokes a cigarette and looks toward his wife while Mrs. Morris smiles directly at the camera. The following page holds a typed passenger list for the 1912 steamship voyage from New York to Cuba, with their names included among passengers continuing to Vera Cruz. Additional leaves contain numerous dated and captioned photographs from Cuba, followed by a printed English language Christmas dinner menu likely retained from shipboard festivities, and later Mexican material including views of architecture and streets, a 1912 Mexico Country Club membership card, and photographs from 1914 showing a refugee ship identified as “leaving” and U.S. Navy soldiers. Other inserted matter includes newspaper clippings on politics and events, and eventually a 1914 telegram reading in part, “General situation is more settled in Mexico desirous of resuming active operations at the earliest possible date glad to have your views reaching there...,” a 1915 rental receipt issued to Mr. Morris for property in Mexico and bearing official revenue stamps, and a 1915 letter from the American Consular Service at Tampico stating, “I have the honor to inform you that the bearer, Mr. Morris, is an American citizen that he wishes to obtain permission to leave Tampico for Tuxpan, Veracruz,” signed by the United States vice consul. Also present is a satirical comic on Mexican political succession described as “Diaz and the procession of his successors....” Other pages include fourteen photographs of the couple attending a corrida de toros in Mexico City, views from a visit to the Viga Canal, photographs of men on horseback firing rifles in Mexico, and images likely taken in San Antonio, Texas, showing time spent with their newborn baby. The final portion of the album shifts to domestic and civic material in the United States, including photographs of Mrs. Morris with the infant, Mr. Morris’s Colorado insurance license, a Denver Athletic Club membership, a 1916 motor vehicle registration, and a 1929 photograph of a friend and his daughter at “Buffalo Bill’s Grave.”

The album follows the couple from honeymoon travel into prolonged residence and movement within revolutionary Mexico, then through their return to the United States and resettlement in Colorado with an infant child, preserving that arc across several years and multiple locations through a dense accumulation of photographs and contemporaneous inserts. The passenger list traces the commercial route linking New York, Cuba, and Veracruz; the Mexico Country Club card and Christmas menu place them within the social world of foreign residents in Mexico; and glimpses of U.S. naval personnel, armed riders, refugee transport, and real photo postcards showing revolutionary violence establish the unstable military and political conditions through which their travel, residence, and departure unfolded. The closing Colorado papers function as the final stage of the same narrative, documenting the shift from residence in Mexico to settled life in Denver within four years. Album with mounted and inserted materials; photographs generally clear with expected age toning and some tonal variation; light wear to mounts, edges, and inserted paper items, overall in good condition. A closely sustained record of an abroad American couples experiences with expatriate residence, political disruption along the Revolution-era Gulf and central Mexico corridor, and eventual return to the United States, documented through personal photographs and related ephemera.

Item #23137

Price: $1,850.00