Portraits from the first 100 years of photography
According to information in an article in the St. Cloud Times in July 2015, the town of Richmond, Minnesota, was officially called Torah for nineteen years, from 1890 until 1909. It had been called Richmond informally by locals before that, but when the town was incorporated in 1890, the name Richmond was already in use at... Continue Reading →
Milwaukee, Wisconsin, was a magnet for immigrants throughout the 19th century. The largest group came from Germany, beginning in the 1840s. The next-largest group came from Poland in the decades after the American Civil War. Other large groups included British, Irish, Scandinavians, Serbians, and Russian Jews. The bride in the portrait above looks Southern or... Continue Reading →
This couple has flair! Her dress is decorated with intricate beadwork, ribbons and flowers. Could it be a wedding dress? What do you think? The cabinet card was made by the studio of William James Wellsted & Son. The back is dark green (blank).
This carte-de-visite isn't the first wedding photograph on the blog, but it's the first portrait of a bride and groom without attendants. For some reason I've been slow to appreciate wedding portraits as a genre, so I haven't bought many over the years. I found this one in January while doing research for an earlier... Continue Reading →
The wedding party in this cabinet card portrait is unusual in its diversity. The young woman at lower right appears to have Down syndrome, while the little boy at the front of the group is of mixed-race ancestry. Oddly, the bride's face is completely obscured by her veil, making her unrecognizable. She sits at the... Continue Reading →
Tokens of Companionship 
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