The Watermelon Man

Bill Davis has looked into this one, and reports that Geneva Pettit believes that the man in the Watermelon Wagon is named Owen T. Karsner, who had such a wagon in Carrollton.

Kathryn Salyers believes the photo was probably taken on Main Street in Carrollton, with the Ohio River in the background. She thought perhaps he grew watermelons down in the bottom behind him in the photo. The advertisement in the doorway may have something to do with a reunion of the Dixie Cavaliers, a Civil War group, perhaps about the time they met on the courthouse square.

Kathryn thinks the house in the rear of the photo looks like ones that were on “Upper” Main Street, but Geneva Pettit says that Karsner once lived in the house with the big columns on the southeast corner of Main and Second Street (see the 1913 flood picture on the left, immediately above the watermelon man on the prior page)