This photo is captioned on the back as follows:
Grandma
Lucinda Blakely Clark
Lu Emma Clark Wagenblast’s mother
The unusual married name of her daughter, Wagenblast, helped me find Lucinda right away in the Family Tree at FamilySearch.org as well as in Ancestry.com. There I learned that Lucinda was born in 1824 in Kentucky and by 1842 the family had moved to Buchanan County, Missouri. She married Jessi Clark. The photographer’s stamp shows St. Joseph, MO as the location of the photographer and that is indeed the county seat of Buchanan County. Incidentally, she would have been living in the same county when the Pony Express began in St. Joseph in 1860. Lucinda’s tombstone is also pictured on FindaGrave.com. I will be messaging contributors of Lucinda’s profile in FamilySearch and Ancestry to see if they are direct descendants and would like to have this old photo.
UPDATE: A great-great grandson of Lucinda Blakely Clark searched the internet and found this website and his grandmother’s photo. He shared the following: ” My great grandmother was Clara Zagrodzky who married John Clark. Grandma Clark told of how she and her siblings were orphaned while quite young. I think she said that the Wagenblast family took them in and raised them as there were no orphanages in Missouri at that time. I would love to have this photo…”
The photo is being mailed to great-great grandson Earl in Atascadero, California. Another happy return!