This photograph shows one of those highly geometric, yet almost chaotic with growth, gardens so popular in Victorian era New England. It also shows the home of Gardiner Greene Hubbard in Manchester, Massachusetts, the first president of the National Geographic Society, and financier and philanthropist. The photograph was taken by his daughter Mabel. Just why it is called the garden flag, when the flag appears to be on the other side of the house, I can’t fathom. In any case, the flag is at half-mast on the death of General / President Grant, so the image dates from July 1885.

The photographer was Mabel Gardiner Hubbard Bell, who lost her hearing when she was four or five years old, due to Scarlet Fever. To help her cope, she became a student of a teacher who specialized in helping deaf students, Alexander Graham Bell. When she was 19 they married. By the time she took this photograph in 1885 she and Alexander had two daughters aged 5 and 7, and had suffered the loss of two baby boys who died as infants, and she was just approaching her 28th birthday. Her husband’s eight year old Bell Telephone Company, was providing his telephone service to about 100,000 Americans.

This unforgettable public domain image of the ‘White House’ Anasazi ruins in Canyon de Chelle is well-known and often reproduced. It is emblematic of cliff-dwellings of the American Southwest. One hardly notices the pueblos at the foot of the cliff — those in the rock-shelter or cave are the center of focus. Then the cliff face continues above, streaked with different colored rock layers in one direction, and stains of a thousand years of rain in the other.

The ruins on the ledge of rock are castellated, like medieval European forts. The one on the left appears to be several stories high, and buttressed for strength. Impregnable, with the high-ground advantage, certainly defenders could withstand anything but a prolonged siege, when water would be their weak point.

But they were found unoccupied; nature had already ousted the defenders — most likely by withholding water. The best laid plans are never a match for relentless time.

This is another Timothy H O’Sullivan image, like our earlier post on Canyon de Chelle, and is dated from the same time period, about 1873.

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 is a picture of Seattle Washington’s first street car — a horse drawn closed coach that looks like it might seat about ten people, but could accommodate few more standing on the platforms front and back. The side of car has signs reading ‘Second and Front Streets’ at top, the number 4 in the middle, and ‘Seattle Street Railway’ at the bottom. Two horses are hitched to the front to provide power, and the wagon has steel wheels that run in a rail track set in the roadway.

This public domain photo was taken in 1884 by Theodore E Peiser. Peiser was born 1853 in California, and we find him living with his widowed mother in the 1870 census for San Francisco when he was 17 and still a student. By 1880 he is still living in San Francisco, but by that time he was a photographer, probably working for one of the established San Francisco studios. In 1883 he moved to Seattle Washington and opened a photographic studio there on Second Avenue, but it was destroyed in the Great Fire of 1889. After that he moved from one studio location to another, but never recovered his former prosperity. In 1907 he returned to California, and in the 1910 census we find him in Modesto, listed as ‘manufacturer of Hair Tonic’. We were unable to locate him in the 1920 census, so he may have been dead by then.