Here we see young Emma Baldwin, standing next to her favorite horse, Mex. We can tell Emma is not quite of ‘full age’ yet, and certainly not married, by the shortness of her dress. Why, if she weren’t wearing boots you could see her ankles! Her father, Captain Theodore Baldwin, was commander of Fort Verde in Arizona (where this picture was taken) from 1885 to 1887, so we know the photo dates from that period. Her clothing is consistent with that date. We see Emma is also wearing a soldier’s forage cap, but she is too distant for us to see the insignia; it may have belonged to her father, or it might have been from Edgar Mearns, who took the photograph.

Dr. Edgar Alexander Mearns (1856-1916) was an Army Surgeon, photographer, and naturalist. He is particularly well-known as an ornithologist, and has been honored by having his name included in the Latin nomenclature of several species. He accompanied several expeditions, including Teddy Roosevelt’s trip to Africa 1909, and Frick’s 1911 Expedition to Africa. We also know Mearns was at Fort Verde in March 1887 because he took a photograph of Major C. B. McLellan’s camp on Clear Creek near there. We do not know for sure if Mearns was stationed at Fort Verde as camp surgeon, or if he was passing through on one his other endeavors, but this public domain photo may well have been taken that same month.

This image, and others like it, were tremendously popular in the late 1800s and early 1900s. They appeared as prints such as this one, and as stereograph images. This is the archetypical image of the South held by northerners — poor black men, women and children toiling in the cotton fields to scratch out a meager living. Sometimes condescending captions were added in mocking imitation of black southern speech patterns.

This public domain image was taken by Edward Warren Day of Charlotte North Carolina, and copyrighted in 1900. Curiously, I could not find any information on him — he was not listed in the 1900 census in Charlotte, and even a web-search failed to turn up any other photos attributed to him.

This European looking setting was actually photographed in Buffalo New York, in 1901 when they hosted the Pan-American Exposition. This building was called the Temple of Music, best remembered as the place where President McKinley was assassinated, while he was attending the exposition. Like all but one other building at the exposition, this was torn down afterwards to make room for a housing development. There are several photographs of this building at night, brightly lit by electric light-bulbs powered from a Tesla generator 25 miles away at Niagara Falls.

This image was taken by photographer Charles Dudley Arnold, who was born in Canada in 1844, and emigrated to the United States in 1862. He settled in Buffalo New York where we find him listed in the 1870 census as a librarian. In 1880 he is still in Buffalo, listed as a traveling agent. Apparently his travels took him to New York City, where he took up the practice of photography. In 1888 and 1889 he is listed as a photographer in the Brooklyn city directories. By 1900 he was back in Buffalo, this time listed as a photographer. The last mention we find of him is in the 1920 census, where he is still listed as a photographer at the age of 76.

This photograph shows the home of Chief Ko-Teth Sha-Doc, in Ketchikan Alaska. I was in Ketchikan in the 1980s and remember seeing a house painted dark-blue with a whale-totem painted on it, similar to this. Probably the home of a descendant of Ko-Teth Sha-Doc and the modern chief of the Tlingit band there. This public domain photograph was taken in 1906.

This is another image taken by a non-professional photographer, Charles Clinton Page. Page was born in New York, probably in Ulysses (Tompkins county) in January 1873, and attended Cornell University in Ithaca, graduating in 1899. He was a lawyer, and practiced in Trumansburg New York for a few years before moving to Alaska about 1906, where he was appointed Clerk of the Court by Judge Royal Arch Gunnison, also a Cornell alumni. In 1914 he was again a practicing attorney, still in Alaska, though he stated his ‘permanent’ location was Long Beach, California.

This public domain image is of William Douglas O’Connor (1832-1889), whom I have called ‘The Poet’ more out of respect for the poetical character of his life, than for his published poems, which were few. In fact, O’Connor experimented with various artistic pursuits including as a daguerreotypist, poet, short-story writer, novelist, essayist, journalist, and editor. But as his 30th birthday approached, he settled down to a government job in the U.S. Treasury Department. It is not so much for his own creative works that O’Connor is remembered, but for his staunch support of Walt Whitman when Whitman was fired from his government job (that O’Connor had helped him get) for writing his controversial Leaves of Grass. O’Connor gave Whitman the label “Good Gray Poet” and defended his work in letters and action — yet the two ended up estranged over differences in political beliefs.This carte-de-visite portrait bears the imprint of Ritz and Hastings of Boston. The Library of Congress assigned it a date estimate between 1870 and 1889, but we can narrow that a bit further. Ernest Ferdinand Ritz (ca 1848-1890) worked for A N Hardy in Boston from about 1870 until 1875-77, when he left to open a studio in partnership with George H Hastings. Ritz and Hastings went their separate ways on January 1st 1885, each retaining one of the two studios they had. So this image dates in the 1875-1884 range for certain. O’Connor would have been 43 in 1875 and 52 in 1884, so looking at the photo I’d think this was most likely taken nearer the end of that range than the beginning. White hair on an Irishman is no great indicator of age, but it also appears to be receding, and he looks older around the eyes than one would expect were he just 43.