Clement F. Kaylor: the postcard man, 1910–1930

c. 1910–1930 — 116 East Second; 116 Lincoln Way East; 112 North Main

Factory hand to studio keeper: Clement F. "Clem" Kaylor was born 9 February 1868 in Huntington, Indiana, son of Harmon Kaylor, a blacksmith, and Eliza Forst. The 1906 city directory shows him not yet a photographer but a hand at the M. W. Manufacturing Company — the Mishawaka Woolen works. By the 1910 census he kept a photography studio in Mishawaka; the census shows his household — his wife Agnes, whom he had married at Fort Wayne on 7 September 1898, and their son Marvin, born about 1901 — and shows his sister Clara working for him at the studio, the one studio employee the Mishawaka record names. The directory course of the studio is fully documented: 116 East Second Street in 1910; 116 Lincoln Way East in 1916, the same rooms under the street's new name, as the genealogy account that assembled the course observes; 112 North Main Street about 1920; and the 1923 directory styling him "Photographer, Framing, Kodak Finishing" — the studio trade of the film era entire in one line. His surviving work is identified by his own hand: three real-photo postcards of Belgian immigrant families in Mishawaka, made in the winter of 1911–12, each embossed in the lower right corner with his imprint, and studied in print by a Belgian-American researcher in 2023 — the sitters the Claeys and De Backer families of West Seventh Street, the cards sent home to Zomergem and preserved there still, in the family collections of Noël De Backer at Zomergem and Jacqueline Hebbrecht at Gentbrugge. Kaylor died in Mishawaka on 14 January 1931; the South Bend Tribune carried his obituary, "Illness Fatal to C. F. Kaylor," that same day. The address question stands open beside Sosnowski's entry: Kaylor's 1910 studio at 116 East Second is the address the harvest gives Sosnowski in 1906. The two records are consistent with a succession of rooms — one studio address passing from one documented keeper to the next — but neither record states it, and the fragment prints the coincidence as a flagged question, not a fact. The settling source is the 1907–09 Mishawaka directories, which would show whether the rooms changed hands directly or stood empty between.

Sources:

1. Anne Laurel Cottage, "Clement F. Kaylor, Photographer," Laurel Cottage Genealogy, 31 January 2015 — photographer in Mishawaka about 1910–1930, not earlier than 1906 (the 1906 directory shows him at the M. W. Manufacturing Co.); born 9 February 1868, Huntington, Indiana; the 1910 census household and his sister Clara at the studio; the studio addresses 1910, 1916, c. 1920; the 1923 directory line; died Mishawaka, 14 January 1931; sources as there cited (1880, 1910 and 1930 censuses; the 1906 South Bend Directory Co. directory, p. 826; Hibberd's directories 1912–1916; R. L. Polk directories 1919–1930).
2. Kristine Smets, "Postcards from Mishawaka," The Belgian American, 27 June 2023 — the three real-photo postcards embossed with Clement F. Kaylor's imprint; Kaylor "active in Mishawaka between 1910 and 1930"; the postcards dated by the sitters' stay to November 1911–late 1912; surviving copies in the collections of Noël De Backer (Zomergem) and Jacqueline Hebbrecht (Gentbrugge), Belgium; for Kaylor citing the Laurel Cottage account and "Illness Fatal to C. F. Kaylor," South Bend Tribune, 14 January 1931, p. 15, col. 1.
3. WikiTree, Kaylor genealogy index — Clement F. Kaylor, 9 February 1868, Huntington, Indiana – 14 January 1931, Mishawaka, St. Joseph, Indiana (corroborating line).