Thanks for helping us crack the case, history sleuths!
With help from our followers and fellow history nerds, we have discovered a recent Throwback Thursday image was mislabeled as the 1910 Wilmington Homecoming, but rather is from the 1914 Fall Festival in Wilmington. We compared images from the event and found the image was taken from the other corner of the community event.
After much research by our staff following questions about if this image was from 1910 or 1914, we have discovered that in fact it was taken during the 1914 Fall Festival in Wilmington – although the back of our image (which we use for throwback Thursday information) stated “1910 Wilmington Homecoming”.
We checked our donor records and found this image was among 14 glass negatives donated to us by Richard Hiatt with a ca. 1910-1920 date. The photographer is unknown but we’ve found the date to be Oct. 27-30, 1914. Staff were lucky enough to also have copies of the 1914 Fall Festival images to compare. The one posted on 5/12/22 is from a different angle but features the same shops and views!
#TBT community feedback is one of the main reasons we do this partnership with WNJ and social media followers! Due to those who asked questions, we are now able to correct our records for the future. Thanks to everyone who commented, and continue to keep an eye out for more images weekly.