Joe Medeiros, a former Glenside resident, wished a happy birthday to John L. McDermond, the mystery photographer behind 177 glass negatives from the early 1900s found in the basement of a house Medeiros bought in 1978 from the McDermond family.

Born in Birchrunville, Chester, PA on December 1, 1854, John died on January 16, 1941, in Philadelphia, according to Medeiros. He was the eighth of eleven children of James McDermond and Hannah Thomas McDermond.

“I don’t know when or why he took up photography as a hobby, but I’ve dated the earliest of his glass negatives to around 1903, when he was 49 years old,” Medeiros wrote. “To celebrate John’s birthday, I’m posting his self-portraits and other photos he took with friends and family.”

The photos:

Medeiros was a former head writer for The Tonight Show with Jay Leno (among other trades) and lived in Glenside from 1979 -1992. You can read our June interview with him here.

For the full blog post, you can click here (it contains “two really bad AI animations”, according to Medeiros).

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Photos: Joe Medeiros