Albert "Abbie" and Margaret (Briggs) Film

Images and notes by Paul McNulty with contributions from Bob Leathers
Picture
Margaret "Maggie" (Briggs) and Albert "Abbie" Film. (McNulty Collection)

Life Story

1890 November 16: Albert Henkle "Abbie" Film was born in New York. He was the son of Anson and Sophia Film. Anson and Sophia Film had six children: William, Edward, George, Anson, Albert and Olive Film. Both George Film and Albert Film had connections to the Union Pacific Coal Company in Hanna and Reliance. ​
1893 April 26: Margaret "Maggie" Briggs was born in Carbon, Wyoming to Alexander and Anna Briggs. 
1908 March 28:  Margaret's father, Alexander, was killed in the March 28, 1908 Explosion of the No. 1 mine. He was Superintendent of the Hanna Mines at the time of his death.
1911 November 30: Albert "Abby" Film and Margaret "Maggie" Briggs married in Rock Springs, Wyoming. 
Albert "Abby" Film worked at the Union Pacific Coal Company Store in Hanna. He worked in the original store, which was moved from Carbon to Hanna. At the same time, Albert's older ​brother George Film was the Union Pacific Coal Company's Hanna Materials Clerk from about 1910 to 1915.
Picture
Old Mine Office. About 1915. George Film, Billy Milliken, O. G. Sharrer, Thomas Love
1915 June 1: Albert and Margaret were living in Brunswick, New York.
1966 June 15: Margaret died at age 71 in Schaghticoke, Rensselaer County, New York. She was buried in the Elmwood Cemetery.
1978 February: Albert died at the age of 87 and was buried in Rensselaer, New York
2010: Albert "Abbie" Film passed away in New York in 1978, but he left behind with the McNulty Collection of pictures that gives a historical view of the Hanna Basin in the early 1900's. Thanks to Mr. Film's grandson, Paul McNulty, the Albert Film pictures are now shared with all those with an interest in Hanna history! Not all of Mr. Film's pictures are shared here, but all the pictures are available for viewing at the Hanna Basin Museum.
Paul McNulty, Abbie Film's grandson, wrote about his grandfather:
Albert "Abbie" Film took a number of pictures of Hanna, its people, and the surrounding area. He developed the pictures onto postcard stock. 

When I was a kid, I used to sit in my grandfather's living room and look at the photographs and listen to his stories of Hanna. He told me about his friend "Ogee" the Indian Sheriff. Ogee tracked down two robbers who hid out with a sheep herd in the prairie and brought them back dead. On horses....Bloated. Dead.

Another story he told me was how he worked in the store (Coal company store?) and that the mule drivers for the mine would come into the store and spit tobacco juice onto the display cases. They (my grandfather and the staff) would have to clean it off. After some time and a verbal go around my grandfather Abbie, the staff decided they would confront the drivers. My grandfather Abbie said they were a bad bunch. The next time, after one of them spit on the display case, my grandfather told them not to do it again, so of course they did. Abbie told me that he got into a fight with the mule driver and that they clinched up together and fell through one of the glass display cases. The glass cut a big slit in his wrist (he showed me the scar). Yep, there was the scar. He also said that two of the guys behind the counter had shotguns, loaded, for backup just in case things got really bad. He said the mule drivers never gave them a hard time or spit on the display cases again. Not sure but I think that the mule drivers went deep into the mine on the railroad type tracks and brought out the coal in small carts to the surface.
I am sending these pictures in the hope that you will find some of your family and will find some good memories of Hanna and the Wyoming area. I hope you will find some of your relatives in these pictures, if not..... I Just hope you will have some fun with the pictures. (Paul McNulty, May 2015)
Albert Henkle "Abbie" Film and Margaret "Maggie" (Briggs) had three children together:
  1. Margaret Olive Film (1912 - 1970)
  2. Sophia Marjory Film (1920 - 2006)
  3. Barbara A. Film (1926 - 2013)