Early Maine Photography

Communities beyond the Portland area are also represented in the Society’s early outdoor photographs, as reflected in street scenes in South Paris and Athens. A South Paris tintype of about 1860 shows eleven members of the Bemis family standing adjacent to the store of merchant Hiram Hubbard. In contrast to the tidy appearance of Main Street, South Paris is the frontier quality of Athens’ vernacular commercial buildings with a barn under construction in the background. Prominent in this ambrotype are the one story shop shared by harness and saddle maker J. B. Tuttle and boot and show maker G. L. Jewett and the two and a half story establishment of E. B. Dunton, a millinery and fancy goods dealer.

Two Maine related outdoor images in the Collection were taken out of state. In 1853 the White Mountain guide Joseph A. Hall proposed to Abner Lowell, a Portland jeweler and mountain enthusiast, a plan for a carriage road to the summit of Mount Washington. Eight years later in August, 1861, the Mount Washington Carriage Road Company opened the road to the top. This rare glass stereo view shows Abner Lowell seated atop Mount Washington at the center of a group of visitors to the summit. Given that glass stereo views were made in America between 1854 and 1862, it is possible that this view was taken during the August, 1861 opening of the road.

A daguerreotype of a white columned Greek Revival house is believed to be the Mobile, Alabama home of Kiah Bailey Sewall and his wife Lucretia Bailey Sewall, the daughter of Portland merchant Ezekial Day. A Bowdoin educated attorney, Kiah Sewall practiced law in Mobile for two decades before the Civil war. Despite financial loss and personal risk, the Sewalls chose to remain in Mobile during the war as Union loyalists.