Dakin’s photographs are a record of the family in the 1880s and early 1890s in Cherry Valley, Otsego County, New York
According to Pauline Dakin Taft,the family “had a passion for picnics. There were picnics all the time at any time of day. Perhaps the lake was a favorite spot for these picnics, for there they could row and sail and enjoy the eighteen-mile steamer trip around the lake.”
See Pauline Dakin Taft, The Happy Valley, The Elegant Eighties in Upstate New York, Syracuse, NY, Syracuse University Press,1965