Joseph Cahalan's Photographs, Part 10:
A Trip to Europe, 1925
These images are from a collection of loose photographs and memorabilia, kept in a cardboard box by my grandfather, Joseph Cahalan, MD.
This group contains photographs and postcards from a trip to Ireland, England and Italy in 1925. My grandfather mentioned that this was undertaken, at least in part, for the Holy Year of 1925, when pilgrims to Rome were allowed access to rarely-seen shrines and other attractions. (In support of that idea, a framed Papal Indulgence is among the family ephemera, and has been photographed for inclusion here.) Pictures of the trip, show that the family crossed through Ireland, and looked up relatives living at the time. This might have been the first time we did so; images of a ruined farmhouse may show the home of original immigrants James and Mary Mulfahey Cahalan, and shots of John C. Cahalan, Sr. with others may commemorate a family reunion.
Evelyn Cahalan Schroeder had been engaged to Harry Roehrig (brother of Anita Roehrig, who would die in 1932 in a car accident with John C. Cahalan III, to whom she was engaged) before his death during a bank robbery in Wyandotte in 1925. My grandfather mentioned that the trip was also undertaken as a diversion to help Evelyn recover from her loss.
Unlike most other installments here, this group of images is heavy on ephemera: several postcards from England as well as the Indulgence are shown, but passports, a volume of hymns for pilgrims, and maps of Europe are also in the collection (either from this trip or another taken during the next Holy Year, in 1950), and a fuller account of the trip will merit an eventual entry of its own on this site. These were kept, it would seem, as souvenirs of an important event in the family history.
Numbered in the order in which they were scanned--a indicates the face, or obverse, of the photo, and b indicates its reverse (if information was to be found there)--this group includes several photographs which have been identified; that information is included in the captions to the images. The originals were first grouped and scanned on April 10th, 2008, and are filed under that date. They have been re-scanned at a higher definition for this upload.
