Name/Title
Dabney family portraitEntry/Object ID
2010.454.1.1Description
A studio portrait of members of the Dabney family, Los Angeles, 1912. There are thirteen persons in the photograph, including oilman Joseph Dabney and his wife, seated at lower left, his sister and her husband seated at right, four of Dabney's brothers, a sister-in-law, two nephews and a niece, all standing. The niece left a detailed description of the event, noting that Joseph Dabney called for his surviving siblings (excepting one with whom he didn't speak) for a photograph after a dinner at a hotel. Dabney had oil investments from about 1910 in Kern County, Ventura, Santa Barbara County and at Signal Hill in Long Beach, at which latter he made his fortune. His Dabney Oil Syndicate included among its employees, from 1922 to 1932, Raymond Chandler, who was vice-president when fired and went on to be a famed pulp fiction writer. Dabney, who endowed a humanities building and dormitory at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, also died in 1932. There is a paper frame that is nearly loose and, except from some cracking at the far upper left, the item is in good condition.
