This family tintype has always stuck out as very interesting to me. As with many other tintypes this one has its imperfections and I’m glad to share my digitally improved version as well as a story to go along.
The portrait shows Joseph Ephraim “Joe” Pruett, who was born in 1883 on a tobacco farm in Pittsylvania County, Virginia. In all, he had six older siblings and two younger sisters. His older sister Alice is my great-great grandmother. Also, Joe’s father and several uncles were veterans who endured major military action during the Civil War. Joe was very close with his family, and being the youngest son, he found himself caring for his parents and managing the tobacco farm as they aged. They lived on 20 acres of land along Irish Road close to the Dry Fork community. When Joe grew up his area was known as the Wilmer community, but that name has overall disappeared from use today.
In 1907, a chilly first day of February, Joe’s father Ephraim Pruett went out to work on the farm and was later discovered to have passed away from heart trouble in the nearby woods. He was sixty-six years old. At this point, Joe took over the family tobacco business and lived there with his mother Delaware Watson Pruett for the rest of her years. In fact, it was during this period and on that farm between 1908 and 1915 that the family wrote letters I display in “Write Soon” my book from 2019.
[Photo] One of Joe’s tobacco sales receipts dated November 24, 1914 from Union Warehouse.
By December of 1915, Joe and his siblings had buried their mother Delaware as well. She was taken at the age of seventy-four by Tuberculosis or “Consumption” as it was also called. After the New Year, as the winter season sustained its harshest chills, it was time to prepare for the next crop. This time Joe had to do it alone. However, he had taken to drinking more, and in a span of two months after his mother’s passing, Joe suffered badly from delirium tremens. At the age of thirty-two, Joe was found deceased at the bottom of the stairway in his home. It happened on February 1, 1916, exactly nine years after his father was found in the woods. Joe was buried next to his parents right beside their house in the little family cemetery.
[Photo] Joe’s hand carved headstone.
Joe never married or had children, and the tintype photo is the only depiction of him that exists. I wish life could have gone a better way for him, but at the least I hope that this can be a tribute to his memory. He was a hard working man who endured much in his short three decades.