Meet Wrinkles Vaughn — Happy National Dogs Day!

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“Wrinkles Vaughn,” real photo postcard, photographer unknown. Rochester, New York, about 1910.

Meet Wrinkles Vaughn, a very fine French Bulldog whose portrait was taken around 1910.  Quickie research suggests that Wrinkles’ owner was 37-year-old Ralph C. Vaughn, who shows up in the U.S. Census of 1910 as a bartender who owned a liquor store and lived in downtown Rochester at 119 East Avenue with his wife, Helen (age 28),  and his widowed aunt Mattie Durfie (age 58).  Vaughn’s fortunes seem to have been mixed.  in 1905, he showed up in the New York Census as a dentist;  by 1920, he was a machinist and his wife was absent from the household.  Since the card doesn’t say anything about the picture, I don’t know who took it, but it is an unusually good postcard portrait.  Whatever Ralph C. Vaughn’s personal tragedies,  he certainly owned a noble — and well cared for — dog!

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Message side of postcard depicting Wrinkles Vaughn. Mailed from Rochester, New York, by Ralph Vaughn 30 June, ca. 1920.

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