Ancestry Magazine

Quick, how well do you know your Spanish-American War history? A tiny clue within a clue within a clue (and a naval battle) hides an answer to this photographic mystery.

A matryoshka doll is a brightly painted wooden figurine that can be taken apart to reveal successively smaller dolls nesting inside one another. It’s also known as a Russian nesting doll. Believe it or not, there is a matryoshka doll of sorts in this photo. Can you find it?

The photograph was sent to us by Sue Edminster, who explained that the man in the picture was her greatgrandfather W. A. Walker. She asked us to date it.

What you’re looking for isn’t an actual matryoshka doll, but the photographic equivalent of one. The photograph contains a clue that contains another smaller clue that contains an even smaller clue. Now do you see it?

The largest clue is the reed organ, once an important domestic instrument. A reed organ offered a cheap alternative to the ever-popular family piano, while at the same time providing a suitable instrument for accompanying family hymns on a Sunday. Hundreds of thousands of organs were sold during the instrument’s peak in popularity in the late 19th century. Today reed organs are the province of collectors and museums.

Identifying the brand of the organ and researching the time period it was available would typically have been the first step to dating the picture, but we noticed a smaller clue associated with it that got our attention. Do you know what it is?

The second clue we found was the theme of the sheet music on the organ. The title is “The Battle of Manila,” and it was composed by Eduard Holst. We found a copy of the sheet music on the website . The picture was taken sometime after the Battle of Manila took place in May 1898.

But wait. There’s more. When we researched the sheet music, we found a third, smaller clue that we thought was even more definitive.

While the sheet music could have been printed any time after the Battle of Manila occurred, the first page of the music shows the copyright date as MDCCCXCVIII, or 1898. The sheet music must have been published between May and December 1898.

The theme of the music—the Battle of Manila—was most likely current at the time the picture was taken. Presumably, the lifetime of such topical publications was not too long. The picture was probably taken between May 1898 and late 1899.