Samuel A. Wolfe

1870 Cabinet Card Photograph Good Templar's Home for Orphans in Vallejo, CA, c. 1870

Albumen print
4 1/2 x 6 1/2 inches ; With photographer's credit and subjects' identification mount recto.

An interesting cabinet card photograph showing portraits of the Executive Committee of the International Order of Good Templars surrounding the Good Templars’ Home for Orphans, which was located in Vallejo, CA. The International Order of Good Templars, a fraternal organization which advocated temperance, built the orphanage by buying land from Vallejo”s son-in-law, John Frisbie, and Frisbie, Wood & Company. It opened October 1st, 1870, and took in 106 children in the first year. Two years later, the I.O.G.T. opened a school there. The orphanage remained active throughout the 19th-century, housing 211 children in 1893, its busiest year. But after a decline in attendance and a pair of disturbing scandals, the building closed its doors in 1919. From the estate of Ron Lerch.