Barney Newmark's 1921 Oakland

Over the weekend St. Louis County Library shared a link to their Digital Archives on social media. It's been around since March, but I hadn't realized it.

Searching the archives, I found a reference to my great grandfather in the 1921 St. Louis City/County Auto Registrations Directory

Organized by registration number, these would be next to impossible to browse if they weren't digitized and made searchable. I knew Barney's address from city directories and census records.

Oakland, a division of General Motors, would later change its name to Pontiac. 

I've long had a photograph in my collection of my great grandfather, Barney, great grandmother Bertha, and their two sons, Melvin and Harold - standing in front of a car. There was no date on the photograph. Since there are multiple cars in the background, I surmised they were on a parking lot. But they could easily be on a sales lot as well. In 1921 Melvin would have been 9 and Harold 6. That seems about right for the photograph.

The directory only tells us the make, not the model. We don't see much of the car in the background. But assuming it's a 1921 Oakland, I have been able to find online images of a coupe, touring car, and a sedan. For a family of four, it's not difficult to guess which one they bought. 

There's no guarantee that the photograph is of them purchasing the car, but it seems likely. 

This doesn't add a lot of genealogical information, but it does provide a very likely year for a photograph.