BACKTRACKING
The Other Side of the
Lens
by Terry Hogan
In genealogy, one of the
best ways "to put meat on the bones" is to have a photograph of the
ancestor. Of course, this has a
temporal limitation as photographs didn't really find their way to the ordinary
person until approximately the 1850Ős.
Some of us are lucky. We
have boxes or even trunks full of hand-me-down family photos of ancestors. Unfortunately, we often find that such
items as names, dates, and places have not been recorded on the photos. Thus we are confronted with anonymous
ancestors or friends of ancestors, staring at us from the past, looking to us
for recognition.
Sometimes there are ways
to put names with faces. The most
obvious way is to ask questions of living family members who might be able to
recall some or all the faces or places.
Ask more than once. Our
memories are fickle things. What
doesn't appear today might appear tomorrow. This is the easy way, and the lucky way, if that is still an
option.
Perhaps the photographer,
himself, will provide a clue.
First, turn the photo over and look for a revenue stamp on the
back. It will look like a postage
stamp. If you find it, or find the
glue where it was before a youthful stamp collector scraped it off, you will
know that the photo was taken during or shortly after the US Civil War. A tax was imposed on photos to help
generate money for the war.
Next, turn the photo to
the front and study the background carefully. Are there signs, buildings, or other clues that provide the
location and approximate vintage of the photo? Are there street cars?
Are they electric or pulled by horse? Look at the people.
Do they look familiar? Do
they have eyes that look like one of your relatives? A family nose?
Now, look at the photo
itself. Many of the so-called
cabinet cards bore the name and location of the photographer, either below the
photo, or sometimes on the back of the photo. This will often give a clue as to location of the
photo. For example, we had some
family photos that included a young man and woman in separate photos, but were
taken by the same photographer, in the same small town in Ohio. The photos were in with other family
photos, but nobody knew who they were.
In doing genealogy research on my mother's side of the family, I had
traced one branch of her ancestors from New York, through Ohio, through
Indiana, where the husband/father served in the Civil War in an Indiana
infantry unit, and then later to Wataga, Illinois. I had learned that they buried a toddler somewhere in/near
LaPorte, Indiana. She had died of
scarlet fever. I found her
obituary in a microfilmed LaPorte newspaper.
Going back through the
old family photos again, I came across the two old photos of young, unknown
faces, captured in time. I noticed
the location of the photography shop.
It was the same small town in Ohio where my maternal great, great
grandfather and great great grandmother were married. I had their marriage record from his Civil War pension
records. There is little doubt that the photos were of Horace and Electa
Marsh. The identification was made
possible by the photographer's information on the front of the cabinet card,
when combined with other genealogical research.
This brings me to the
title of the article. From about
the mid 1800's on, the invisible photographer - the guy on the other side of
the lens has played a key role in helping genealogists. But despite this, there really is very
little recorded about these entrepreneurs. For example, Galesburg was blessed with a large number of
photographers in the late 1800Ős and early 1900Ős. They did family photos. They did funerals. They did the
occasional building fire and train wreck.
Probably the best known local photographers were Osgood and Loomis. They must have had a long run in
Galesburg, as each left a legacy of recorded Galesburg history. I have come to
this conclusion not through any scientific method, but rather just from their
frequent occurrence in stacks of old photographs for sale in Galesburg antique
stores.
There were many other
local photographers whose names I won't list, simply because I have little else
but their names to offer up. Harrison
is perhaps a minor exception, only because of his brief moment of history
making. In October 1858, Harrison
traveled from Galesburg to Monmouth and photographed a state politician. The
subject had been in Galesburg a few days earlier for a political debate. Two
years later, that politician, Abe Lincoln, became president during the critical
time of our Civil War. Whether
Harrison knew that Lincoln was bound for greatness, or whether he thought the
photo might be a good economic item if Lincoln were to become state senator
after the debates, is not known by me.
But as often is the case, it is better to be lucky than good. Harrison found his moment of fame and
may be remembered for this photo alone.
But we still don't know
much about the guys who carried the heavy cameras of the day and had to fuss
with the chemical processes in uncontrolled temperatures in search of the
perfect, or at least acceptable, photo.
Some had stationary studios. Some traveled the country side by wagon,
visiting small towns and remote areas that did not support a local studio.
Often the local studios had backdrops and relied upon fake Greek or Roman
columns to aid in producing a sense of grandness often betrayed by the shabby
"Sunday's-best" being worn by the subjects.
But these Galesburg
photographers were on the other side of the lens. Their own photos were not taken. Their history was not recorded. In my limited collection of Galesburg and Knox County
history references, I could not find a discussion of these early pictorial
historians. Carl Sandburg, in his
autobiography, Always the Young Strangers (1953), mentions Osgood as being a
well-known photographer, but only in the context that he (Sandburg) helped put
a metal roof on Osgood's house. Even the great local history of Galesburg and
Knox College, They Broke the Prairie (1937), by Earnest Elmo Calkins fails to address
the men who recorded the early visual history of Galesburg. The county
histories cover local politicians, banks, fraternal organizations, Swedes,
Irish, animals, factories, banks and bankers, and the list goes on, but not the
local photographers
It seems nobody
photographed the guy on the other side of the lens or recorded his story. Our
local history is a little poorer for it.
We know little of the
guy on the other side of the lens.
2/1/07