Duluth Mystery Photo #11: 1891 Couple

Well, both look to be about 16 years old or so.  Also, I don't think either is wearing a wedding ring, but can't tell for sure.  Additionally, in this case the male is sitting while the female is standing over him -- a reversal of traditional gender placement in old photos?

So I wonder if they are siblings.

P.S.  As young as this kid is, that is some mustache.  I am betting he could have grown a mighty mullet if he had lived a century later.

Wait, did I see that wrong? Is that a mustache or a shadow? Do I need bifocals Hmmm.

Yeah, that looks like a 16-year-old peach-fuzz mustache. And there are no rings, so we probably are indeed looking at siblings.

On the other hand, how could that young lady possibly be single? I mean, with the way she's showing off her hankie like that, I'd be surprised if she made it out of the West End without five proposals.

Sadly, the fiery ol' Swede Lars Liden appears to have been a drunken jerk. From the March 10, 1911, Duluth News Tribune:

I Googled it, but couldn't find when divorce became legal in Minnesota, especially with the wife filing, and especially with the grounds being abuse, and finally, especially with the wife asking for child custody and property settlement. If Minnesota was offering this in 1891, then this rates highly in the reasons I moved here from Nebraska.

In the meantime, I sure hope old Lars kept his paws off of these two in the photo. And I hope his wife got her fair share of this photo's proceeds.

Turns out Lars had two wives. He was married in Sweden at age 20 in 1878 and two kids later, with his wife living in St. Paul, Lars filed for divorce in Feb. 1901, according to the St. Paul Globe. 

A June 1905 Herald item notes a new wife and the birth of a baby girl. 

A year before the apparent second divorce, according to the Feb. 8, 1910 Herald, Lars was arrested for shooting an air rifle at a neighbor boy.

Lars was the definition of unruly.

These two places were apparently on each end of 1619 W. Superior St. in Duluth’s West End.

However I honestly know nothing of this place. I just saw a pic while looking at randomness and it seemed interesting. I'm a certified (for a whooping three years lol) Hollywood Ca Historian. I've always been fascinated with these types of mysteries. The stories are always better than we can imagine when they eventually get solved. I was born and raised here in Hollywood and for work (that actually pays my bills) I'm the master archivist at USC digital library.

I'm confused. The Johnson's Furniture locations on the 1900 block of West Superior Street would have been three blocks from the Lars N. Liden studio on the 1600 block -- not "on each end" of it. Or am I missing something?