Photographers Without Cameras

12918.

Artists at Work, Prospect Park, Brooklyn. I believe the man at right is W.E. James. An assistant can be seen working, leaning in the back of the dark wagon.

30311.

Mrs. A.H. Bates, Born August 6th, 1848. Height 7 feet 11 1/2 inches. Weight 413 Pounds. Capt. M. V. Bates, Born November 9th, 1845. Height 7 feet 11 1/2 inches. Weight 478 Pounds. The man on the right is Charles Eisenmann, the photographer.

Martin Van Buren Bates (November 9, 1837 – January 19, 1919), known as the “Kentucky Giant” was an American man famed for his great height. He was 7 ft 11 in. tall and weighed 475 lbs.

He began a big growth spurt at some time around the age of six or seven, and was over 6 ft. tall and weighed over 200 lbs. by the time he was twelve years old.

Upon the outbreak of the Civil War, Bates joined the 5th Kentucky Infantry Confederate States Army, as a private, in 1861. His ferocity in battle and imposing figure saw him quickly promoted to the rank of captain. Bates was severely wounded in a battle around the Cumberland Gap area and captured and imprisoned at Camp Chase in Ohio, although he later escaped.

He returned to Kentucky after the war. Before the war, his first occupation was as a schoolteacher. While the circus was on tour in Halifax, Canada, the 7-foot-11-inch-tall Anna Haining Swan visited. She and Martin soon got to know each other, and were married in 1871. The highly publicized wedding, at St. Martin-in-the-Fields in London, England, drew thousands of people to try to attend, due to both the uncommonness of the spectacle and the disarming good nature of the pair. Queen Victoria herself gave them two extra-large diamond-studded gold watches as wedding presents.

Martin and Anna moved to Ohio in 1872, settling in Seville. On 19 May 1872, Anna gave birth to a daughter, who weighed 18 lbs.and died at birth. The couple built a large house to accommodate themselves comfortably. He explains the next few years in his autobiography:

While in Ohio, I purchased a farm in Seville, Medina County. It consisted of 130 acres of good land. I built a house upon it designed especially for our comfort. The furniture was all built to order and to see our guests make use of it recalls most forcibly the good Dean Swift’s traveler in the land of Brobdingnag.

I had determined to become a farmer, so I stocked my farm with the best breeds of cattle, most of them being short horns. My draught horses are of the Norman breed.

My rest was not to last long, for the solicitations of managers, I consented to again travel. The seasons of 1878, 1879 and 1880 found us leading attractions of the W. W. Cole circus.

While we have during these years been blessed with many things, affliction again visited us in the loss of a boy, born on the 15th day of January, 1879. He was 28 inches tall and weighed twenty-three pounds and was perfect in every respect.

Anna Bates died on August 5, 1888. Martin ordered a statue of her from Europe for her grave, sold the oversized house, and moved into the town. In 1889 he remarried, this time to a woman of normal stature, Annette LaVonne Weatherby and lived a mostly peaceful life until his death in 1919 of nephritis.

 

30313.

Anna Swan and Martin Van Buren Bates, husband and wife. The man on the right is Charles Eisenmann, the photographer.

40022.

Umbrella Rock on Point.  Royan M. Linn at right; photo shack at left; shadow of photographer in foreground.

40023.

Lookout Photographer and Staff on Pt. Lookout Mountain. Royan M. Linn and operators.

40024.

Lookout Photographers on Lookout Mountain showing part of Battlefield and Chattanooga in the distance.

40064.

Gentleman, probably the photographer, looking at stereoviews. Frames and cases in background. Image is pseudoscopic.

40066.

Photo studio interior. Photographer sits in background at keyboard. Image is pseudoscopic.

40132.

517. Suttler’s Store, Little Missouri. F. Jay Haynes sits at right. His plate box with “Haynes, Fargo” is by his side.

40174.

William Henry Jackson at work.

40176.

398. Camp Life, Upper Ausable Pond, Sept. 8, 1876. Seneca Ray Stoddard self portrait sitting at the table facing camera. The string to pull the shutter is visible.

40177.

Traveling photo studio of E.A. Adams, Whitinsville, Mass.

40182.

Rock City, (near Olean). There is a photographer working under the dark tent at right, his hat lays on the ground.

40183.

No. 110. Camp in Echo Canon. William Henry Jackson at his camp site.

40185.

515-Photographing in High Places. William Henry Jackson at work.

40232.

Self-portrait by W.E. Bowman, Ottawa, Illinois.

40234.

Wilt Santee & W.E. Bowman, self-portrait with friend.

40235.

Alexander R. Beckers. Beckers first saw a daguerreotype in Philadelphia, and subsequently went to work there for photographer Frederick David Langenheim in 1843. The following year he moved to New York, where he is credited with the first whole-plate daguerreotypes made in that city. Within months Beckers opened the Langenheim & Beckers studio in New York, which became Beckers & Piard in 1849. In 1857 he patented a revolving stereograph viewer and shortly thereafter sold his daguerreotype business in order to concentrate his attention on the manufacture of stereograph viewers.

40236.

Self-portrait of George Rockwood (4/12/32-7/10/11), NYC photographer. It looks like Mary Rockwood was practicing her penmanship on verso.

40243.

Georg E. Hansen and wife with his very large solar enlarger. Follow the link for his biography.

40261.

Baby at 11 months old. Sept. 26, 1870. This is the photographer with wife and baby.

40270.

Self-portrait of photographer W.E. Bowman.

40271.

Mrs. W.E. Bowman, wife of photographer W.E. Bowman.

40272.

Photographer Seaver having a meal on his boat on the St. John’s River, Florida. Plate box at rear left.

40274.

Views of the Great West. Utah Series. Cactus Study. Desert South of St. George, Southern Utah. C.R. Savage’s photo wagon, center. See The Savage View: Charles Savage, Pioneer Mormon Photographer, by Bradley W. Richards, M.D.

40281.

Private Mailing Card from W.E. Bowman, Ottawa, Ill.

40286.

No. 135. Gates Ravine. HH Bennett sits in row boat with large portable dark tent.

40298.

Rural photograph studio. Two men sit out front. The man on the left has one leg. He holds a wooden crutch and balanced on his knee is a photo printing frame.

40320.

The 5 Slee Brothers.

40321.

On the Road Bangall to Po’keepsie, June 17th, 1863. Two of the Slee Brothers.

40331.

No. 412. Camp Ne-un-grah Ah-rut-chu (Mosquito Bite). H.H. Bennett is facing us in the tent; William Metcalf to the right.

40334.

Photographer W.J. Bradley, Strathroy, Ontario, Canada with a lens board on the table by his side.

40350.

E.M. Johnson’s Tent.

40358.

Composite card of 9 images of the photographer Singhi.