A woman is trying to find the owner of a long-lost photo album that dates back nearly 150 years.
Chico resident Lorrie Foster, who grew up in the Bay Area, said that the photos in the album were all shot in the 1860s and 1870s, decades before the 1906 San Francisco earthquake that destroyed much of the city.
“This book, one thing leads to another and another and another and it’s mind-boggling,” Foster said.
Most of the pictures were taken by well-known San Francisco and Oakland photographers at that time. The photos showed sharply dressed men and women with hairstyles and beards of the period.
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But Foster said she doesn’t know who they are.
“I’ve been fiddling with this for about 20 years off and on. It’s a bucket list wish to find out who it belongs to,” she said.
To add to the mystery, the book was stolen.
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Foster said that her father worked for police in the East Bay. In the 1960s, he nabbed a burglary suspect who had the photo album in his trunk. No one claimed it after the trial, so Foster's father kept it.
“I wouldn’t let him sell it at a yard sale because it belongs with the family, or at least a museum,” Foster said.
Foster and NBC Bay Area's Ian Cull found a few answers after two days of researching the photo album. They found a name that was engraved on the photo album, which was W.R.H. Adamson.
NBC Bay Area found old papers that claim Adamson was the executor of Adolph Sutro’s will. As in, the Sutro Heights and Sutro Baths, and the former mayor of San Francisco Adolph Sutro. The photo album was apparently a gift to Adamson, but it's not of one family but all different people.
“On the back of it, in gold, it's written 'Christmas 1876,'” Foster said.
The one photo Foster said she could identify had a name written in the bottom of it. The name was Sir Arthur Edward Kennedy, who was the governor of Hong Kong and western Australia in the 1800s.
Foster said that she just wants to find the family with answers to the long-lost mystery photo album.
