Street scene

This photo from the Dan Harbaugh collection is probably from the early 1930s, location unknown. Click on the photo to make it larger, then look at the two women in the background looking at an infant.

Strike up the band

Dan Harbaugh took this photo of a military band performing somewhere in the Washington, Pa., area in 1938.

Jessop Steel, circa 1935

Again, no date or location came with this photo by Dan Harbaugh, but he did an unusual amount of work at Jessop Steel in Washington, Pa., in the 1930s.

De plane, de plane!

A grass airstrip, somewhere in Pennsylvania, sometime in the 20th century.

Old friends

Notice the similarity in expressions ...

Concentration

Back in the days before computers, when work was done with a brain and a fountain pen ...

Working steel

Here's another photo by Dan Harbaugh of the Jessop Steel mill in Washington, Pa., in the 1940s. I'm not sure if steel is being ground or cut, but maybe someone out there can explain.

Roadside snack

Here's another photo from the Harbaugh collection, identification, date and location unknown. The black-and-white photo was hand-tinted, and not very well. Or maybe they're just munching on mustard sandwiches.

Jessop Steel workers

These two people in the offices at Jessop Steel in the 1940s appear to be microfilming documents, although there was no identification or description accompanying this photo from the Harbaugh Studios. The balloony pants are what caught my attention. Plenty of slack in those slacks!

On the beach

Another undated photo with no identification from the Harbaugh collection ...

I like this photo because of its allegorical nature. It's one of those photos you can look at for a long time and start imagining who the people were and what their circumstances were: the young married couple on holiday with the wife's crazy sister, who comes to the beach with a pitcher of Manhattans...

Road hunting

I'm not sure how this ended up in the box of Harbaugh Studios photos; a stamp on the back indicates it was a promotional photo from General Motors. What's being promoted are special window arrangements and windows with gun holes, presumably to make shooting at suspects from cars safer. Hmmm.

A man and his gator

This is another photo from the Harbaugh collection. Typically with these photos from the studio once located at 69 N. Main Street in Washington, Pa., date, identification and location are unknown.

Civil War veteran

Clinton V. Lewis was one of seven surviving veterans of the Civil War until his death at age 92 on Nov. 28, 1939. Lewis was born at Ruff Creek but spent most of his life in Lone Pine. He enlisted as a teenager in the 18th Pennsylvania Cavalry in March 1865, near war's end. This photo, from the Harbaugh collection, was taken in 1938 at the G.A.R. encampment in Washington.

Ciivil War nurse

Mary Pollock of West Alexander was one of several local women to serve as nurses for the Union Army during the Civil War.

At work

Welder at work, from the Harbaugh Studio. Date and location unknown.

Civil War veteran

William D. Welch claimed to be 100 years old when this photo was made by the Harbaugh Studio in 1938. Wounded at Antietam, he recovered and returned to fight at Gettysburg and several other major battles. He lived for many years on a houseboat on the Monongahela River at Dunlevy and claimed to have spent 90 years along that river, the Ohio and the Mississippi and boasted that he knew "every lock, dam, shoal and snag between Pittsburgh and New Orleans."

He died in Cincinnati on Dec. 17, 1945, at age 113, according to his calculations.

Members of the club

In the early 1950s, service clubs were for men only, and just about everyone smoked. (From the Harbaugh Studios collection).

Sharing a light

This photo is from the collection of the Dan Harbaugh Photo Studio, that came into the possession of the Observer Publishing Co. some time ago. I am fascinated by its blending of sweetness and revulsion.