The child in the photograph

The portrait shows a carefully dressed girl standing in a photographer's studio. Her right hand rests on a small fringed table, while a painted landscape, a low decorative wall and a heavy curtain form the background. She wears a fitted bodice, a broad skirt ending above the ankles, high boots and a necklace or religious pendant.

Her dress, proportions and facial appearance suggest an age of approximately eight to ten years. The short skirt and fully visible boots are especially characteristic of a child's costume. An adult woman's skirt in the same period would normally have reached the floor.

Two conflicting identifications on the reverse

The reverse preserves two conflicting identifications. An earlier note names the sitter as Mary Emma Van Landschoot, wife of Timothy Wood. That identification was subsequently crossed out and replaced by the name of her mother, Sophie Buse, born on 23 May 1828 and wife of W. H. — William — Van Landschoot. The later writer even added that Buse was “apparently her maiden name,” revealing some uncertainty.

The later correction cannot be reconciled with the photograph. Sophie would have been at least thirty-seven when this card could have been produced, whereas the sitter is unmistakably dressed as a young girl. By contrast, the crossed-out identification agrees with both the child's age and the family chronology. The most plausible conclusion is therefore that the original identification of Mary Emma was correct and was later replaced by an erroneous attempt to identify her as her mother.

The provenance of the photograph

The photograph comes from Sharon Ehler of Denver, Colorado, a great-granddaughter of Mary Emma Van Landschoot. This direct line of descent is important: the card was not found anonymously or acquired from an unrelated collection, but was preserved within Mary Emma's own family.

The connection is also personal and well documented. Hans Van Landschoot and his family visited Sharon and her husband in Denver, and the couple later visited the Van Landschoot family in Belgium. The image and the information written on its reverse were shared through this continuing contact between the Belgian and American branches of the family.

This provenance considerably strengthens the original identification. It does not by itself prove when Mary Emma crossed the Atlantic or how she came to be photographed in Bruges, but it makes it much less likely that the sitter was an unrelated Belgian child. Taken together with the crossed-out wording “Mary Emma Van Landschoot, wife of Timothy Wood,” the family ownership provides strong evidence that the girl is indeed Mary Emma.

Mary Emma and her family

Mary Emma was born in Milan, Illinois, in 1858, seven years after her parents had left Belgium for the United States. She was the eldest surviving daughter known to fit the apparent age of the child. Her younger siblings cannot reasonably be considered: another daughter was born only in 1865 and a son followed in 1871.

Mary Emma was back in Illinois by 1872, when she married Timothy Wood at the unusually young age of about fourteen. This supplies an important outer limit for any childhood journey. If she personally sat for the Bruges photographer, she must have crossed the Atlantic to Belgium and returned to Illinois before her marriage.

The photographer: Herman Van Marcke

The printed name on both sides of the card is De la Marck de Lummen. This was an artistic or commercial name used by the Bruges photographer Herman Van Marcke, born on 6 September 1824 and deceased on 4 December 1885.

Van Marcke arrived in Bruges from Antwerp on 18 September 1853. He presented himself as a former photographic retoucher for André-Adolphe-Eugène Disdéri in Paris, the photographer whose name became inseparably associated with the popularisation of the carte de visite. Van Marcke's earliest cards also described him as a former pupil of the celebrated Brussels studio Ghémar Frères.

His first known Bruges advertisement for cartes de visite appeared on 27 March 1860. The alternative name “De la Marck de Lummen” is documented on photographic cards from approximately 1865. He and his family left Bruges in 1877 or, at the latest, in July 1878, and he appears to have abandoned professional photography at about that time.

The studio history therefore provides a firm photographic window: this card cannot date from Mary Emma's birth year and was almost certainly made between about 1865 and 1877. The child's apparent age narrows the most likely date to 1866–1868.

A carte de visite

The portrait is a carte de visite: a small albumen photograph mounted on card. Introduced during the 1850s, this inexpensive format became enormously popular during the 1860s. Families exchanged the cards, sent them to relatives abroad and preserved them in specially made photograph albums.

The sober design of this example also points to the 1860s. The mount has straight corners, the photographer's name is printed discreetly beneath the image, and the reverse carries only a small emblem with the words “De la Marck de Lummen — Bruges.” Later nineteenth-century mounts often displayed much more elaborate typography, medals and ornamental advertising.

An undocumented Atlantic crossing

William Van Landschoot is known to have returned from Illinois to Belgium twice during the 1850s and 1860s. His repeated journeys prove that contact with Belgium continued after the family's emigration and that an Atlantic return voyage was entirely possible.

The photograph raises the strong possibility that William took Mary Emma with him on one of the later journeys, probably between 1865 and 1869. During their stay they may have visited relatives in or near Bruges and commissioned this portrait from Herman Van Marcke. Father and daughter would subsequently have returned to Illinois, where William died in 1874 and where Mary Emma had already married in 1872.

No passenger record for Mary Emma's outward or return journey has yet been identified. That absence does not disprove the journey. Nineteenth-century passenger lists are incomplete, children's names may be abbreviated or omitted, and Van Landschoot appears in numerous phonetic spellings. Nevertheless, until a passenger list, passport, letter or other record is found, the journey must remain a well-supported hypothesis rather than an established fact.

Ambrose and Mary Jane return in 1873

A surviving passenger list documents another transatlantic journey within the immediate family. In 1873, William's brother Ambrose Van Landschoot, aged fifty-two, returned from Belgium to the United States with his much younger wife Mary Jane, aged about twenty-seven. They were recorded as United States citizens, confirming that this was a return journey rather than a first immigration.

The notation “6/12” most probably indicates that the couple travelled with a six-month-old infant, presumably their child. It should not be interpreted as a reference to Mary Emma, who had already married Timothy Wood in Illinois in 1872. Mary Emma is not named with Ambrose and Mary Jane on this passenger list.

Their journey does not prove how Mary Emma came to be photographed in Bruges, but it demonstrates that close members of the family continued to travel between Illinois and Belgium. Ambrose and Mary Jane may also have carried family photographs or additional prints back to Illinois in 1873. The list therefore provides valuable context, while Mary Emma's own journey remains undocumented.

Assessment of the evidence

Conclusion

The photograph is best understood as a childhood portrait of Mary Emma Van Landschoot, taken in Bruges around 1866–1868. The dating rests on three mutually supporting elements: the documented career of De la Marck de Lummen, the style of the photographic card and the apparent age of the child.

The reverse originally identified the sitter as Mary Emma, wife of Timothy Wood. Although that wording was later crossed out and replaced by her mother's details, the photograph itself supports the earlier identification. Its preservation by Mary Emma's great-granddaughter Sharon Ehler adds a direct chain of family provenance. Rather than showing Sophie Buse, born in 1828, the card almost certainly shows Sophie's daughter Mary Emma, born in Illinois thirty years later. Until documentary proof of Mary Emma's voyage is found, the image remains both a family portrait and an intriguing piece of indirect evidence for a forgotten childhood crossing of the Atlantic.