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Zion's Cameramen: Early Photographers of Utah and the Mormons
Utah Historical Quarterly
Vol. 40, 1972, No. 1
Zion's Cameramen: Early Photographers of Utah and the Mormons
BY NELSON WADSWORTH
MANY PEOPLE OFTEN wonder why we cannot look today upon some of the latent images of early Mormon and Utah history prior to 1860. Since photography was invented in 1839, one reasons, why didn't the Saints photograph the Mormon Prophet Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum before they were killed by a mob at Carthage, Illinois, in 1844? Cameramen have been recording history ever since Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre fixed a latent image on a silver-coated copper plate in 1839, so why didn't someone fix a few images of the building of Nauvoo, the Beautiful, that progressive and once thriving Mormon city on the western frontier founded the very same year Daguerre announced his process to the world? The Frenchman's daguerreotype not only marked the invention of photography but the beginning of photojournalism as well, because man for the first time had learned how to freeze a moment of time on a light-sensitive surface. Why, then, didn't John C. Fremont photodocument his early explorations of the Rockies? And why didn't the Mormons photograph their westward migration and subsequent subduing of the desert elements before construction of the railroad ended their isolation in 1869?
The truth of the matter is they did! The early comers on the Mormon and western scenes did have their photojournalists. Pictures were taken of Joseph Smith, Nauvoo, and the Mormon temple built there. Fremont did make daguerreotypes on his expeditions in 1843 and 1853. Unfortunately, the technology of photography in the early Nauvoo period and in the beginning of the westward movement was not far enough advanced to preserve many of the original exposures for our time.
Later cameramen did document the Mormon struggle to build up the desert Zion. Much of what they took is also lost, but thanks to the foresight of a few frontier photographers, who photocopied the work of their predecessors and took pictures of their own, and others who donated the work to museums, libraries, foundations, societies, and archives, there are still quite a few notable survivors. Few realize it, but the history of Utah and the Mormons — beginning at Nauvoo — was documented in photographic detail by a multitude of skilled cameramen. The loss of much of their work to history can be attributed to the inherent weaknesses of photography — the eventual distintegration of even the most "permanent" latent image — coupled with the ignorance and lack of historical foresight of those into whose hands the pictures fell after the death of the pioneer cameramen.
During the course of his research on the forthcoming book, Through Camera Eyes, a Photographic History of Utah and the Mormons, the author combed the dusty corners of historical archives for old, faded photographs from the past. Many of yesterday's images are missing. Others, even though they are theoretically being "preserved" by collection agencies, are gradually crumbling and flaking away, are being loaned and lost, or handled, dog-eared, and smeared with the fingertips of a thousand hands. Some people, often ignorant of the latent images' historical value, destroy them unwittingly. In one case, hundreds of original glass plate negatives exposed on the frontier were deliberately soaked in tubs of water to remove the emulsion so the old glass could be used as panes in window frames. In another instance, boxes containing glass plate negatives of priceless historical value were found in the attic of an old Salt Lake City home, and the owner, not realizing their worth, sent them to the dump where they were burned or buried along with tons of trash. In still another case, a highly reputable agency discarded nearly a thousand glass plate negatives to create some much-needed storage space. Even though the negatives were microfilmed, the crisp quality possible only from the original images has been lost forever. And a few years ago some teenage boys, hired to clean the upper floor of a downtown business in Salt Lake City, found great sport in throwing glass negatives out of a second-story window to watch them break in the bed of a truck below. The broken glass was taken unceremoniously to the dump. As sad as it may seem, these cases are not isolated exceptions but typical of what is continually happening to the remaining vestiges of pioneer photography.
Despite its fragility, the photograph remains an extremely reliable source of historical proof, a truthful representation of what the photographer originally "saw" with his camera eye. The pioneer photojournalist was in reality an eyewitness to history.
Even though the names of some of the early photographic geniuses have since been lost or buried in obscurity, they were nevertheless true pioneers of their art. They were in the forefront of photography's historical developments, and despite the hardships of living on the western frontier, they were able to apply the crude technology then available to them to produce high quality latent images. One cannot find in modern films and printing techniques anything to match the clarity, definition, and simplicity of an 1850 daguerreotype or an 1859 collodion wet-plate negative, particularly if one judges the original and not some copy print many generations removed.
Although there were undoubtedly dozens of cameramen clicking shutters and making exposures among the Mormons between 1841 and 1910, the story can be told in the lives of a few key men, whose pictures from a photojournalistic sense progressively unfold the visual images of Mormondom and Utah.
THE BEGINNINGS IN NAUVOO
There is evidence that at least one daguerreotypist was practicing the art in Nauvoo, perhaps as early as 1843, some three or four years after Daguerre announced his invention in France. His name: Lucian R. Foster, age unknown, of New York City.
Foster's first ad appeared in the Nauvoo Neighbor on August 14, 1844, but he was in business some months before that date. His gallery on Main Street offered both plain or colored "likenesses," and prospective customers were advised that "specimens may be seen at the Mansion House," the famous inn operated by Joseph Smith. Foster advertised his work at three dollars per picture, including a "handsome morocco frame."
Another ad appeared in the Hancock Eagle of April 3, 1846, a newspaper published in Nauvoo shortly before and after the Mormons were driven out. Foster announced he was "again prepared to take likenesses by the Daguerreotype process, in the same superior style which was so much admired last summer." Boasting of the superiority of the process over all other forms of art, the ad invited public examination of specimens on display "on Parley Street, one block east of Main Street, adjoining the 'Cheap Cash Store' of Mr. J. Field."
The question immediately arises whether Foster photographed Joseph Smith before his death in June 1844. The prophet knew Foster, because on April 29, 1844, Smith recorded in his history of the church:
One cannot imagine that Joseph Smith, with his active, curious mind would not be intrigued by the new "magic" of daguerreotypy and as a result be among the first in Nauvoo to pose for his likeness. On the other hand, photography on the frontier was just beginning, and perhaps Smith, like many others, was skeptical about the new form of art and wanted to wait and see how it could be applied. In its infancy, daguerreotypy was closely associated with portrait painting, the daguerreotypist often providing the "model" for the artist's brush or the engraver's etching tools.
The prophet, who was thirty-eight in 1843, did record that he "sat for a drawing of my profile to be placed on a lithograph of the map of the city of Nauvoo." He also casually mentioned sitting for his portrait in oils but did not once record posing for a daguerreotype. Although he made no such entry in his history, there is strong circumstantial evidence that he was photographed and that the photographer was Lucian Foster. The omission of such an entry is understandable, since these were trying days for Joseph Smith.
Just when Foster photographed Smith is now a matter of sheer conjecture. The most likely time would have been around the state presidential convention which met in Nauvoo May 17, 1844, and nominated Smith for the presidency of the United States. Since photography in 1844 was still in its infancy in the United States, Foster must have been learning how to operate his camera about the time of the state convention. Certainly there was some early experimenting in Nauvoo before he publicly advertised services. But just who was Foster, and where did he learn his photographic skills?
Lucian R. Foster was president of the New York Branch of the Mormon Church in 1841 at a time when the faith was growing rapidly in that metropolitan city. He presided until August 27, 1843, shortly after which he moved to Nauvoo to join with the body of the church. We can assume that Foster learned the daguerreian art in New York City. He was a contemporary of Mathew Brady, who later was to become known as Mr. Lincoln's Camera Man and the first of America's great photojournalists. Brady was in New York learning photography at the same time as Foster, between 1841 and 1843. He opened his first gallery there in 1844. There is a strong possibility that Foster and Brady learned their skills from the same teacher, Professor Samuel F. B. Morse, who later achieved fame for his invention of the telegraph. Morse and another professor, John W. Draper, built a glass skylight on the roof of the University of the City of New York building in the summer of 1840 to experiment and teach students daguerreotypy. Foster more than likely was among those students, eager to learn the new art so he could take it to the prosperous frontier city of Nauvoo.
It has already been established that Foster saw Smith in the Mansion House in April 1844 at which time the pencil case was delivered. The topic of conversation was not recorded, possibly because the prophet spent the remainder of the day embroiled in legal maneuvering against the apostates who were plotting his overthrow. But we can suppose that he and Foster talked about the new art of daguerreotypy and that Smith inquired about the photographer's newly-acquired trade and how it might aid in the upcoming campaign. At the time of the political convention, Foster was setting up his gallery on Main Street, fitted with some kind of skylight or window to admit illumination for portraiture. Such a portrait from life of the prospective candidate would be of great value in making engravings for posters, newspaper stories, and articles during the campaign.
The daguerreotypist was active at the convention. In the minutes recorded in the History of the Church, we find him among a five-man committee appointed to draft resolutions for the adoption of the convention. He was also elected to a four-member central committee to coordinate Smith's national campaign. In addition, he was elected delegate from New York City and, as such, according to one resolution, was instructed to "make stump speeches" in his district.
Is it not likely that during all the political furor in Nauvoo that Foster took Joseph Smith into his newly furbished Main Street gallery and captured his likeness on one or more daguerreotype plates? The coming campaign cried for such a portrait.
The existence of photographs from life of Joseph Smith is more than mere conjecture. Long after the Mormons settled in Utah, the Smith daguerreotypes mysteriously emerged from their historical burying place. On August 18, 1885, the Deseret News in Salt Lake City reported:
And exactly a month later:
Carter's retouched portrait of Smith can be found in the Prints and Photographs Division of the Library of Congress. The author also located the original copy negative, on which the retouching was done, in the Carter Collection now owned by the Mormon Church's Information Service. Carter was apparently convinced he had a daguerreotype taken in life of Joseph Smith, but a little bit of darkroom detective work discloses he could have been mistaken.
A painting of Joseph Smith once owned by his wife Emma and now by the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, bears striking resemblance to the Carter copyrighted pictures. If the Carter negative is superimposed on the painting in an enlarger, the two match up perfectly, proving they came from the same original source. There are only two possible explanations: one, that Carter actually had the Foster daguerreotype in his possession and copied it, or, two, he had a daguerreotype copy of the painting and was fooled by its realism. By photographing the Joseph Smith death mask from the same angle as one views the painting, and by also superimposing these in the enlarger, one discovers that the painting was indeed an exact reproduction of Smith's face.
The author of this paper is reasonably sure that the Carter copy of the daguerreotype represents the most authentic visual image of Joseph Smith now in existence. Even if Carter were mistaken and had a daguerreotype of a painting, it would still add up to a case of which came first, the chicken or the egg!
In 1910, the Salt Lake Tribune published the painting of Smith along with a letter from his son Joseph Smith III. The letter questioned the authenticity of a life-size portrait just completed by painter Lewis Ramsey that had been reproduced in the newspaper two weeks before. Said Smith in his letter:
In 1843, Joseph Smith III would have been eleven years old, probably too young to recall whether his father was indeed photographed by Foster, but his testimony is all that remains.
The man who executed the "authentic oil painting" of the Mormon prophet is now unknown, according to historians in the Reorganized Church which has the work on display in its Heritage Hall in Independence, Missouri. For years, however, this church told visitors to its headquarters that the painting was done by William W. Majors, an English painter. Unable to substantiate the claim when art experts said it was not Major's style, the church changed the label to "unknown."
But the author of this paper believes it was Majors who painted the portrait of Joseph Smith, not from life in 1843 but shortly after the prophet's death. Majors used the only authentic visual image of Smith then in existence — one of Foster's daguerreotypes! An exact duplication of the portrait in oils would explain the difference in styles that one finds in Majors's work. Copies of daguerreotypes would be much different than paintings executed from life. Actually, Majors did not arrive in Nauvoo from England until late in 1844 or early 1845, but he could have used an engraver's stylus or a prismatic camera lucida to duplicate in exact detail the visual image of Joseph Smith. That the face of the prophet in the painting is accurate cannot be denied, especially if one compares the painting to Carter's copy and notes the subtle differences and also compares both to the death mask which was cast before Smith was buried.
A search among the descendants of Joseph Smith III has thus far failed to turn up the original daguerreotype, but the author is convinced that it does indeed exist somewhere, perhaps now in a tarnished, unrecognizable state. If it should someday be found, there are delicate techniques that could restore it to at least a portion of its original beauty.
What happened to Foster? Between 1844 and 1846 he captured the only known latent images of Nauvoo, including pictures of the Mormon temple. He photographed Brigham Young and other church leaders. But when the Saints were driven from Illinois in 1846, Foster was not among them. His name is last mentioned in church records by a terse note recorded September 13, 1846, at Winter Quarters, Nebraska Territory: "Lucian R. Foster was cut off from the Church by the Branch at New York for apostacy." Whether Foster continued to pursue his daguerreian skills in New York -— or on the American frontier — is now unknown.
DAGUERREOTYPY IN UTAH
As far as can be determined, the Mormons were without a photojournalist to document their western exodus between 1846 and 1850. Daguerreotypy appeared once more in their midst in Salt Lake City on December 14, 1850. One feature in that afternoon's Deseret News could not help but catch the immediate attention of readers. It was a heavy black sketch of a cannon, heading an advertisement on an inside page. Not only was it the first illustration to appear in the six-month-old newspaper, but its frequent appearance in the next ten years made it a familiar trademark in Salt Lake City. The copy in the ad, too, must have captured reader interest, for it offered a new and remarkable service on the frontier:
Thus, the first commercial photographer in Utah and the Intermountain West was in business, and the illustration in the advertisement was symbolic of his name: Marsena Gannon, age thirty-eight, recently of Boston, Massachusetts.
According to surviving records, and they are scanty, Marsena Cannon was born August 3, 1812, in Rochester, Stafford County, New Hampshire, not far from the border of Maine. His father, Hiram, was a prominent doctor in that region. Sometime around 1841 Marsena and his family moved to Boston where they met Mormon missionaries and were converted to the faith. They were listed as "members in good standing" of the Boston Branch in 1846, according to records filed at Cutler's Park, near Winter Quarters, Nebraska Territory, late in that year. Even though Cannon's membership records were filed in Nebraska Territory, the daguerreotypist and his family remained in Boston until 1850. His moves in that city, along with his professional connections, are detailed in Wilford Woodruff's journals between 1848 and 1850.
On March 7, 1848, while Woodruff was at Winter Quarters getting ready to depart for a mission to the East, he recorded in his journal: "I had a call from Dr. Cannon. He wished me to call and see his son Marsena Cannon, 75 Court Street, Plumbe's Dagaurious (sic) Gallery, Boston." Woodruff's entries for March 14 and May 16, 1849, and February 18, 1850, when he was in Boston, describe daguerreotypes taken by Cannon of his family. From Woodruff's entries also come concrete proof that Cannon learned the art of daguerreotypy from John Plumbe, Jr., one of the pioneers of American photography.
Plumbe opened a daguerreian gallery in Boston in 1840 and soon had a chain of galleries, operated by agents, in a number of eastern cities. He was the first to copy daguerreotypes on lithographic stone, which could explain Cannon's later interest in using his photographs to make engravings. But Plumbe and his agents met financial disaster in 1847, and the galleries were sold to meet the demands of creditors. Cannon and another agent, William Shew, kept Plumbe's Boston gallery in operation, however, first at 75 Court Street and later at 123 Washington Street. This can be proven from the entries in Woodruff's journals.
Cannon and his family departed for Utah in the spring of 1850. The photographer may have taken pictures of the wagon trip across the plains and of the Mormon settlements in the Nebraska Territory, but such a feat in those primitive surroundings was not likely, and Cannon later made no mention of this in his advertising.
Although he was not the first to make pictures on the western frontier, Marsena Cannon was the first to preserve them well enough to survive to our time. He was the first known resident photographer in Utah — the first to take daguerreotype portraits as well as pictures of buildings, landscapes, and news events. His are also the first street scenes of Salt Lake City.
The enterprising daguerreotypist dominated Utah photography for more than a decade, outlasting a handful of competitors who would set up shop and also advertise in the Deseret News. Occasionally he would take in a partner — sometimes the competitor who had advertised the week before in the News. Financially, such galleries could not have been very successful. In return for his services, Cannon advertised his willingness to accept cash or payment in kind. In 1857, for example, he ran this ad:
To All Saints: Wanted: Hay, oats ; peas, beans, butter, eggs 3 fox and wolf skins and cash for Likenesses ... At the sign of the cannon. Open on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays.
And in 1858:
Those persons who want likenesses^ especially those to whom I am indebted will please call soon as I shall close business in a short time. M. Gannon.
During his heyday, Cannon photographed Brigham Young on a number of occasions, captured street scenes on both daguerreotype and ambrotype plates, covered the groundbreaking of the Salt Lake Temple in 1853, and photographed the old Salt Lake Tabernacle, the Beehive House, the Council House, and the General Storehouse and Tithing Office. He also made literally hundreds of portraits of early Salt Lakers. His portraits of Mormon authorities were engraved by Frederick Hawkins Piercy in Liverpool and printed in a beautiful sepia ink. Piercy also used several Cannon daguerreotypes in his Route from Liverpool to Great Salt Lake Valley, an immigrant guide to western America.
Several things happened between 1859 and 1861 to create a crisis in Cannon's career. New and perhaps better skilled photographers began arriving in the wagon trains from the East. Coincidentally, the art of daguerreotypy was being replaced by the new collodion, wet-plate process that allowed photographers to make enlarged prints in any quantity from a permanent glass negative. Although Cannon was Brigham Young's chief cameraman during the 1850s, the Mormon leader posed for another photographer — C. W. Carter — sometime near his sixtieth birthday in 1861.
One of the final dampers to Cannon's career came during the October conference of his church that same year. The names of the pioneer daguerreian and his one-time partner, L. W. Chaffin, were read from the pulpit to go to southern Utah to settle St. George and to grow cotton for the territory. James Bleak, historian for the St. George colonists, lists Cannon and Chaffin as the only two daguerreans out of the 309 names read at the conference. Bleak also lists them both in the census taken in St. George in 1862, indicating, at least, that the two photographers answered Brigham Young's call. Sometime before 1869, however, Cannon returned to Salt Lake City.
Cannon was a member of the Seventh Quorum of Seventy in Salt Lake City. His name can be found in the minute book of that organization — his participation was infrequent — together with a penciled notation obviously entered years later: "By his own request dropped from the Quorum."
Cannon's disaffection is explained, perhaps, by his alignment in 1869 with the so-called liberals in Utah, a group of Mormon businessmen and intellectuals who rebelled against the authoritarian policies of Brigham Young and formed the New Movement, later known as the Godbeites after one of its founders, druggist and general store proprietor William S. Godbe.
Just two days before the election of 1870, Godbe and his followers announced an Independent ticket, and among the nine candidates for city councilor was one Marsena Cannon, residing on First West Street, between North and South Temple.
The results of the election on Monday, February 14, 1870, proved to be a disaster for the liberal cause. Cannon, like the others on the Independent ticket, garnered less than three hundred votes.
The fate of the photographer from this point on is somewhat obscure. The last entry in the official records about the former daguerreian artist is made on a small white card filed in the "Old Church Record" in the LDS Church Historian's Office. Typewritten entries for Cannon, his wife, and children state simply: "Cut-off from the Church 1874."
According to Mrs. Olive Lulu Cannon Rasmussen of Ogden, a granddaughter, Cannon moved to California after his excommunication and lived for many years with his daughter Sarah in the San Francisco Bay Area. But when Sarah married, the photographer, then an old man, moved back to Utah to live with his son, Bouman, then manager of the Salt Lake County Infirmary and Poor Farm. Mrs. Rasmussen recalls visiting the old man at the infirmary sometime shortly before she married in 1899. Cannon would then have been eighty-seven. "He was sick and lying on a cot," Mrs. Rasmussen said. "I remember he cried because he didn't want to live away from his daughter Sarah." She did not remember her grandfather's dying, but his death must have occurred on the Poor Farm shortly after the visit. Nearly alone, most of his family scattered, severed from his church, and his life's work forgotten, the one-time daguerreian artist passed quietly from the scene, an unfitting end for the first resident photographer in Utah, the first to look through a camera lens upon the unspoiled beauty of the state, and the first to photodocument the Mormons in their mountain refuge.
A NEW ERA DAWNS
During the Crimean War, a young soldier in the British army became interested in photography and decided to pursue the vocation after he was mustered out of the service. From sketchy information that survives, we can deduce that Charles William Carter learned photography sometime during the war. It is not clear just where he served or whether he saw action on the battlefront, but the tall, angular soldier took up the camera shortly after the collodion or wet-plate process forced daguerreotypy into obsolescence in the mid-1850s. Coincidental with Carter's interest in photography, Roger Fenton, secretary of the Photographic Society of London, was the first to document the battlefields of war. Fenton traveled to the Crimea in 1855 with a wagon fitted out as a darkroom and photographed many memorable scenes of the conflict, including the cannonball-strewn battlefield over which the famous Light Brigade charged. There is no evidence to suggest a connection between Carter and Fenton, but the feat of photo-documenting war proved the portability of the wet-plate process and undoubtedly influenced Carter's later frontier camera techniques. Sometime after the Paris Peace Treaty ended the war in 1856, Carter worked as a schoolmaster, teaching photography on the side. It is not known exactly when or how Carter joined the Mormon Church, but missionaries baptized him sometime between 1856 and 1858.
Carter's daughter, the late Mary Carter Osborn of Salt Lake City, remembered him as being tall, slender, reserved, and intellectual, and as having a keen sense of humor. When interviewed at age ninety-two, Mrs. Osborn had difficulty remembering details of her father's life. According to her account, as well as genealogical records, Carter was born August 4, 1832, in London. After his conversion to Mormonism, he came to Utah with several sisters (three or four — Mrs. Osborn was not quite sure), and three friends. About twenty-five miles out of Fort Bridger, the wagon broke down and Carter, his sisters, and friends had to walk the rest of the way to Salt Lake City, arriving sometime before the winter of 1859. At one time in his career, Carter apparently worked for C. R. Savage, but the length of employment and the time are not known.
Mrs. Osborn remembered her father's saying he spent two hundred dollars for his first wet-place cameras and set up a gallery on Main Street. Later, he moved his gallery to Main and Third South streets. According to Mrs. Osborn, one of the wealthy Walker brothers built her father's first gallery. Carter remained at the Third South location for many years, and his painted sign on the front of the building became a familiar sight. In 1887, the front of the building advertised his services:
As a child, Mrs. Osborn remembered visiting her father at his studio and playing on the chair where the headrest was fastened in front of a huge, wooden view camera. His darkroom, she recalled, was very small, measuring only about ten feet square.
The wet-plate process which Carter and his contemporaries used depended on the portability of their cameras and darkroom equipment. Glass plates had to be coated with guncotton (collodion) mixed with excitants like bromine, sensitized in silver salts, loaded in holders while still wet, exposed in the camera while the emulsion was tacky, and developed immediately before the salts dried and crystalized on the glass.
This cumbersome, somewhat complicated, and precise process had to take place within a span of ten minutes, or the emulsion would lose its sensitivity. Such a limitation meant, of course, that the photographer of Carter's day had to take his darkroom, chemicals, plates, and all of the rest of his equipment with him on every picture-taking excursion. Added to this were the difficulties and complications of changing weather and dust and chemical contamination, any one of which could spoil the plate. In spite of these obstacles, wet-plate photography held sway for nearly twenty-five years. Those who practiced the art — like Carter — did an unbelievably thorough job of photo-documenting the western frontier.
Thanks to Carter, many of Marsena Cannon's daguerreotypes, as well as several taken by Foster, survive to this day. Carter photo-copied every interesting picture that came his way and filed the negatives for future use. A portion of them can be found in the C.W. Carter Collection maintained by the Mormon Church. Early views of the Beehive House, Main Street, and other pioneer buildings and scenes in this collection obviously pre-date Carter's arrival in Utah.
Almost immediately upon going into business in Utah, Carter was successful. His technique captured the imagination of the settlers, and his services over the years were always in demand. Among Carter's early customers was Brigham Young, who divided his business between Carter and another English photographer named C. R. Savage.
Carter loved to photograph Indians, and his wry sense of humor is illustrated in a notebook entry made shortly after photographing "Pahute Jim and his squaw":
Carter also had a good sense of the historic and photojournalistic. In addition to the portraits of leading notables of Salt Lake City, he photographed a wide variety of landscapes, city scenes, and significant historic events. For example, in 1872, when Brigham Young appeared in court on a charge of "lewd and lascivious cohabitation," Carter focused his camera on a large crowd gathered outside Judge James B. McKean's courtroom. The photograph has since been generally captioned as "a crowd scene in Salt Lake City," but in Carter's own caption book it has been labeled "Brigham Young's Trial."
Carter also outfitted a darkroom wagon and traveled throughout Utah Territory, photographing geographic points of interest. Once, he met a wagon train of Mormons coming down Echo Canyon and captured some memorable views of the immigrants slowly making their way through some beaver ponds that blocked the canyon trail.
Among the photographer's surviving pictures are a vivid portrait of Ann Eliza Webb Young, the unruly wife of Brigham Young who sued him for divorce in 1873, a series of views of the federal troops at Camp Douglas, and remarkably clear views of Salt Lake City and its surroundings in the 1860s, 1870s, and 1880s, as well as progressive views of the Salt Lake Temple and Tabernacle under construction, from the earliest stages of foundation to dedication. Carter continued his photographic trade through the 1880s and 1890s amid growing competition. As his life waned he opened a stand just outside Temple Square where he sold pictures to tourists,
Carter outlived his chief competitor and old employer, C. R. Savage, by nearly nine years. But on March 13, 1906, too old to take any more pictures and too feeble to peddle prints and postcards from his stand, the Englishman sold his entire negative collection to the Bureau of Information on Temple Square. According to the bill of sale, the collection then consisted of fifteen hundred to two thousand negatives "more or less and contained in 21 boxes." In the same transaction, the pioneer photographer sold "all photographs and views . . . and all other accessories and appurtenances," including copyrights and all other materials connected with his photographic work at his residence, 2 Church Street. The photographer attached a notebook which he marked "Exhibit A" to the bill of sale. It contains a partial list of his negative collection. In return for the negatives and equipment, the Bureau of Information gave $25 to Carter on the tenth day of every month until the sum of $400 was paid. The bill of sale was signed by Benjamin Goddard for the Bureau of Information and witnessed by Jacob F. Gates.
The photographer lived for another twelve years after the sale. Then during the night of January 27, 1918, while staying at the home of a daughter, Mrs. George Smith, in Midvale, Utah, Charles William Carter had a heart attack and died. He was eighty-five.
Carter's extensive negative collection was used for a number of years in making prints, uncredited, for the Temple Square Bureau of Information. Eventually, after being filed away in boxes in the basement of the museum, it was forgotten. In 1963, museum curator Carl Jones began taking inventory of the museum's holdings and discovered a wooden box containing three hundred of Carter's negatives under a pile of dust and junk in the basement. The collection is now held by the Mormon Church's Information Service in its own negative file at Panorama Productions, a commercial studio in Salt Lake City that does photographic work for the church. Much of the collection — probably a large share of the individual portraits — has been lost over the years, but many of the valuable historical pictures have been preserved, including the controversial "photograph" of Joseph Smith.
CHORISTER WITH A CAMERA
Charles Roscoe Savage began life in poverty. He was born August 16, 1832, in Southampton, England, just twelve days after Carter was born in nearby London. His father, John Savage, was an impoverished gardener who spent much of his time trying to develop a blue dahlia, a flower for which a great reward had been offered. Because the elder Savage was unsuccessful in financial affairs, his children grew up in want and without funds to acquire an education. Young Charles never learned to read and write as a child but had to teach himself in later life. Perhaps this frustration at failing to get a childhood education made Savage the avid learner he was in later years. He became an astute observer of the world around him, believing he could learn from every new experience. This trait gave him a discerning, artistic eye that served him well as a photographer.
At the age of fifteen, somewhat bitter and disillusioned about life, Savage chanced upon a Mormon missionary preaching in the Southampton streets. The meeting changed his life. Words flowing from Elder Thomas B. H. Stenhouse's lips made a lasting impression on the teenager's mind. Savage quickly made a number of Mormon friends and before long found himself a convert for life. He was baptized May 21, 1848, when he was not yet sixteen years old After his conversion, Savage found employment in Portsmouth in a stationery store owned by another Mormon, William Eddington. It was a business that would later serve him well as a sideline to his photography.
At twenty, Savage went on a mission to Switzerland for the Mormon Church, traveling on foot across the countryside in search of converts. During these missionary days he learned French and a little German and continued to educate himself. He returned to England in 1855 and signed up for the emigration to Utah with a company of Italian and Danish Saints. They crossed the Atlantic aboard the ship John J. Boyd, leaving Liverpool December 12, 1856. The voyage was particularly rough, with a number of the passengers swept overboard in heavy seas and a high incidence of death, especially among the Danish Mormons. The ship arrived in New York City February 15, 1857, and Savage acquired a job in Samuel Booth's Printing Office which he held for nearly two years.
Savage had been interested in photography even before he came to the United States. In his notebooks, under the date of December 5, 1855, he listed the prices for "camera lens complete, $35; camera box minus lens $15." It was in New York, however, that he determined to pursue the profession in earnest. Encouragement came from Elder Stenhouse who had reportedly brought a stereoscopic camera from England which both men experimented with in New York. Savage learned what he could about photography, investigating the improved collodion wetplate process.
Mathew Brady was then converting his daguerreotype operation over to the wet plate. In 1856, Alexander Gardner, an English photographer, had joined Brady in New York, and with him had come the process of enlarging prints for Brady's gallery. At this time, Savage was also participating in a Mormon choir and cultivating an interest in music and singing that stayed with him the remainder of his life.
Leaving his family in New York, Savage headed West in 1859 on a special assignment to Florence, Nebraska Territory, for the Mormon Church. There he made his first commercial start in the photographic business, setting up his camera in front of an old grey blanket and taking portraits. His darkroom consisted of a converted tea chest. A year later, living with his family once again, he set up shop in Council Bluffs, Iowa. In his diary, dated April 30, 1860, he reported total income "from taking pictures" in the first five months of the year at $224.75, plus $50.00 for "giving instructions in the art." Apparently he was trying to earn enough money to buy a team of oxen and a wagon to continue west to Utah. He must have been successful, because on June 7, 1860, Savage loaded his family — a wife and two small sons — into a new wagon, prodded the oxen, and slowly moved toward the western horizon. The Savages traveled in the Franklin Brown Company of ten wagons.
Savage took pictures of the trek across the plains, but none of them, so far as is known, survives — at least none can be identified. In his diary, he reported that he "got a view of Bluff Ruins and Chimney Rock" and "a splendid view of Devils Gate," but it is impossible to find them in Savage's surviving prints — mostly undated — of the Mormon Trail.
The Brown Company arrived in Salt Lake City August 27, 1860, with the Savage wagon making its way down Parley's Canyon the following day and reaching the city long after dark. Two days later, the photographer made arrangements with Marsena Cannon "to go in with him until his departure for the states." Apparently at that time Cannon was planning to leave Salt Lake City. On January 30, 1861, Savage and Cannon placed a solitary ad in the Deseret News, announcing to the public that they would "re-open for business" in their new gallery, the first house north of the Salt Lake House, over Chislett and Clark's new store. They advertised "photographs, stereoscopes, ambrotypes and Melainotypes [tintypes], also, pictures on cloth, leather and paper to send by mail . . . prices as low as can be afforded for good work." The partnership could not have lasted long, however, as Cannon left for St. George at the end of 1861, at which time Savage founded his Pioneer Art Gallery on East Temple Street. In the years that followed, he became the most prolific and talented pictorial Utah photographer of his day.
After opening his gallery, Savage lost no time in cultivating contacts with major newspapers and magazines in the East. By 1866, his views were being published as woodcuts in such publications as Harper's Weekly. His "Views of the Great West" were sold as stereoscopic series for both Union Pacific and Denver & Rio Grande Western railroads. These companies supplied Savage with private railroad cars to take him on his photographic excursions. It was his fine work with the railroads that helped establish the Union Pacific tradition for excellent pictorial presentations of the West, a tradition that survives to this day.
Savage's feeling for artistic composition made him particularly adept at the panoramic photography that came into national prominence during the wet-plate era. In addition, he had an artist's touch for portraiture. His portrait of Brigham Young, taken in 1876, which shows Young with cane in hand sitting at a table less than a year before his death is by far the best, the most famous, and the most powerful photograph ever taken of the fiery Mormon leader.
Another trait that made Savage a great photographer was his willingness to travel. For example, a lengthy trip in 1866 took him first to San Francisco where he boarded a ship and sailed around Cape Horn to New York. He was glad to be back in New York after having been gone for seven years. While there he was escorted around by H. T. Anthony, a pioneer photographer who founded a world-famous photographic supply house. From New York Savage traveled by train to Nebraska City where he fitted out a special photographic wagon for the trip across the plains to Salt Lake City. Later, he described his journey in an article for the Philadelphia Photographer. With two spans of mules and provisions for two months, Savage joined a Mormon wagon train and returned to Utah, making hundreds of pictures along the way. Many of these can be found today, and they give an accurate view of the immigrant's trek across the plains. Savage returned to Utah an entirely different photographer. He had made it a point on his entire trip to search out all other lensmen along the way to pick up new ideas about his art.
There were many other trips, including a journey with Brigham Young in 1870 to visit southern Utah, including the Rio Virgin country, Zion Canyon (then named Little Zion by Brigham Young), and the Mormon settlements in Utah's Dixie. Views from this trip can also be found in many photographic collections.
Probably the most newsworthy picture Savage ever took was the linking of the rails on May 10, 1869, at Promontory, Utah. About a week before this historic event, Union Pacific asked Savage to help photodocument the driving of the Golden Spike. Arriving at Jack and Dan Casement's camp a few days early, Savage observed that the railroad workers were the hardest bunch of men he had ever seen assembled in one place. "Every ranch or tent has whiskey for sale," he wrote in his diary. "Verily, the men earn their money like horses and spend it like asses.
On the day of the great event, Savage made this entry:
For many years Savage was given credit for all of the news photographs of "East shaking hands with West" at the driving of the Golden Spike. But in 1962, with reexamination of the Pacific Railroad photographic collection held by the American Geographical Society, the original negative of the best-known view —- a huge eleven-by-fourteen inch glass plate — was found among the Captain Andrew J. Russell Collection. Russell, Savage, and Alfred A. Hart of Sacramento were the three professional photographers who covered the event. Before one accuses Savage of getting credit for the wrong picture, he should realize that the three photographers were standing in almost the same spot when the event took place. As a result, many of the pictures are practically identical. As a matter of fact, one can find pictures taken within a split second of one another, only from slightly different camera angles. Savage printed copies of his best views and sent them to Harper's. One was printed as a woodcut June 5, 1869.
In the summer of 1883, tragedy struck Savage's studio and wiped out his entire negative collection. Shortly after midnight on June 21, flames were discovered in the home of H. B. Clawson, adjacent to the Council House on the southwest corner of Main and South Temple streets. The fire spread rapidly despite the heroic efforts of the Salt Lake Fire Brigade and the Walker Brothers Fire Company. Then, about twelve-thirty, flames ignited a powder magazine. The explosion rocked Salt Lake City, breaking windows for miles and turning Savage's gallery into a seething mass of flames. The next day, Savage grimly estimated the loss at twelve thousand dollars, not to mention the irreplaceable loss of his entire negative collection gleaned over years of hard work.
The energetic photographer reestablished his business, stayed active in life, and remained a stalwart member of the Mormon faith until the end. He spent much of his time working in worthy charitable causes, singing as a charter member of the Tabernacle Choir, making the aged more comfortable and happy in life, and devoting himself to church service. In 1906 he retired from management of his store and studio, then located at 12-14 Main Street, but he still worked there off and on with his sons. Three years later on a Saturday he complained of "feeling poorly" and went home. Shortly after midnight on February 3, 1909, he died, probably of a heart seizure. In his obituary in the Deseret News, he was remembered as much for his work in the Tabernacle Choir and his charity to old folks as for his pioneer photography.
Lake Blanche in Big Cottonwood Canyon is a classic example of Savage's skill as a landscape photographer. Utah State Historical Society collections.
With the deaths of Savage and Carter, the era of frontier photography drew to a close in Utah. Back in the East, during the peak of their careers, an enterprising young bank clerk named George Eastman started manufacturing dry plates in Rochester, New York. By 1888, the Eastman Dry Plate and Film Company was manufacturing a flexible film and the first model of the roll film Kodak Camera. "Anybody who can wind a watch can use the Kodak Camera," advertised Eastman. The Kodak and its many successors made picture-taking available to the common man and revolutionized both the art and science of photography, a revolution which is still under way.
Of course there were many other frontier cameramen who performed remarkable photographic feats in the Intermountain West during the wet-plate period. John K. Hillers, E. O. Beaman, and James Fennemore lugged hundreds of pounds of wet-plate equipment on John Wesley Powell's danger-packed exploration of the Colorado River in 1871-72, bringing back wet-plate negatives that gave America its first photographic glimpse of the Plateau Province. William H. Jackson's wet-plate photographs of the Yellowstone taken on the Hayden Survey in 1871 eventually convinced Congress to establish the country's first national park. At the beginning of the dry-plate period, one of Savage's apprentices, George Edward Anderson, who later opened a gallery in Springville, spent seven years retracing the "Birth of Mormonism" in photographs and pursuing a dream that to date remains unfulfilled. And Salt Lake City's Harry Shipler, one of the founders of the Shipler photographic business, carried an eight-by-ten inch view camera in a cross country automobile race, photo-documenting the early days of travel by internal combustion engine.
But then, these are other stories in Utah's rich photographic heritage.
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