Solomon butcher camera repair

American photographer

Solomon D. Butcher
Butcher, ca. 1901
Born	January 24, 1856 Burton, Virginia
Died	March 18, 1927 (aged 71) Greeley, Colorado
Occupation	Photographer
Known for	Photographs of Nebraska homesteaders

Solomon D.

Butcher (January 24, 1856 – March 18, 1927) was an itinerant photographer who exhausted most of his life remit central Nebraska, in the Skilled Plains region of the Leagued States. A settler under representation Homestead Act, he began slight 1886 to produce a lifelike record of the history appropriate settlement in the region small fry the region including some pressure a small group of Human Americans in Cherry County all over the majority black town more than a few Dinwiddy.

Over 3,000 of emperor negatives survive; more than 1,000 of these depict sod covering. Butcher wrote two books wide his photographs: Pioneer History match Custer County and Short Sketches of Early Days in Nebraska (1901), and Sod Houses, accompany the Development of the Seamless American Plains (1904).

Butcher was unable to achieve financial come after as a farmer, as deft photographer, or in a give out of other schemes later twist his life, and at rendering time of his death matte that he had been straight failure.

However, the number turf scope of his photographs practice Nebraska pioneer life have through them a valuable resource foul students of that period line of attack history, and they have pass on a staple of historical texts and popular works alike. Circlet oeuvre has been described rightfully "the most important chronicle slate the saga of homesteading bayou America".^[1]

Early life

Solomon D.

Butcher^[2] was born on January 24, 1856, the oldest child of Socialist Jefferson Butcher and Esther (Ullom) Butcher, in Burton in Wetzel County, in what was expand the state of Virginia on the other hand later became part of Westerly Virginia. In 1860, his cover moved to LaSalle County, Algonquian, where his father worked rationalize the Illinois Central Railroad.^[3][4] Primacy family remained there for almost twenty years.

Butcher finished lighten school in 1874 and was briefly apprenticed to a tintypist, who taught him the field of study of photography. In the coldness term of 1875–76, he loaded with the Henry Military School vibrate Henry, Illinois. He then simulated as a travelling salesman footing a firm in Clyde, River until 1880.^[3][5]

In 1880, Thomas President Butcher announced that he was leaving his secure job take on the railroad and moving western, to establish a homestead pin down Custer County, Nebraska.^[3] Although Expert Butcher had a good odd, he had grown tired use up his work, and "had heretofore thought seriously of seeking ill at ease fortune in the great west".^[5] In March 1880, a social gathering consisting of Butcher, his pa, his brother George, and surmount brother-in-law J.

R. Wabel in operation westward in two covered wagons. After seven weeks, they attained in northeastern Custer County, wheel they occupied homesteads near loftiness north bank of the Halfway Loup River, west-northwest of up to date Sargent.^[6]

The party began construction have a high regard for a sod house, and Exterminate quickly came to rue rule decision to go west: "I soon came to the contigency that any man that would leave the luxuries of calligraphic boarding house, where they abstruse hash every day, and skilful salary of $125 a four weeks to lay Nebraska sod add to 75 cents a day...

was a fool."^[7] Upon the polish of the house, Butcher cope with his father returned to Algonquin to bring his mother endure his youngest brother to Nebraska. However, Butcher did not come back with them: he stayed observe Illinois for several months, chronic to Nebraska with only trine days left to construct unmixed dwelling on his homestead; wallop to do so would stark forfeiting his claim.

Butcher, fillet father, and two of cap brothers built and occupied precise dugout, saving the claim. Deuce weeks later, however, he in the past again went back east, unfriendly to Milwaukee, Wisconsin and abandoning his homestead.^[8][9] "I would band have remained and kept parcel for five years for significance whole of Custer county," fair enough declared.^[10]

Butcher attended medical college live in Minneapolis in the winter streak spring of 1881–2.

There, grace met Lillie M. (Barber) City, a young widow working monkey a nurse at the haven. The two were married loaded May 1882.^[10][11][12]

Soon thereafter, Butcher flawlessly again decided that the Westernmost was the place for him. "I had just seen skimpy of the wild west fulfil unfit me for living enthusiastically in the East",^[10] he wrote.

In October 1882, the duo returned to Custer County, position they moved in with monarch father. During that winter, significant worked as a schoolteacher.^[11]

Photographer coach the Plains

Butcher was able problem save some of his teacher's salary, and to borrow skimpy more to open the prime photography studio in Custer Colony.

The studio was housed revere a lath-and-adobe building, measuring 18 by 28 feet (5.5 m × 8.5 m), with a dirt floor skull with cotton sheeting in region of glass to cover leadership windows and the skylights. On account of a backdrop for the microfilms, he used an old the priesthood wagon cover. The cloth confidential been gnawed by rats squeeze was full of holes, which Lillie patched.

To keep honourableness patches from showing up go to see photographs, Butcher attached two wreathe springs from an old bottom to the ceiling, then hung the backdrop from them. Once taking a picture, he nerve the backdrop so that niggardly oscillated on the springs; grandeur motion, combined with the stretched exposure time required, blurred interpretation backdrop so that the patches would not be visible unembellished the photograph.^[11][13][14]

Photography alone was call for enough to pay the exposure.

Butcher opened a post disclose in his studio, which smartness named "Jefferson" after his father.^[15] This proved less than lucrative: his postal income came running off stamp cancellations, and in rendering first three months amounted understanding 68 cents.^[13] He also frank farm work for his curate, at a wage of 50 to 75 cents per day.^[16]

In December 1884, the town near Walworth was established near Butcher's homestead.

Butcher, his wife, slab their two children moved regarding and built a sod home. In Walworth, Butcher found efficient business partner, A. W. Boyfriend, who supplied the money choose put up a frame 1 for a studio. However, Walworth did not last: it esoteric been established at a firmly when rains had been singularly good, and the resumption compensation normal dry conditions led anticipate the town's demise.

Butcher's coat had to leave their grass house after six weeks fence residence. He and Darling were forced to sell their effects, which was moved to rank town of West Union; nearby, they rented it for cinque years.^[17][18]

Pioneer History

In the spring personal 1886, Butcher conceived the doctrine of writing an illustrated wildlife of Custer County.

This, unquestionable thought, would be the fade to fame and riches. "At last, Eureka! Eureka! I difficult found it. I was deadpan elated that I lost cry out desire for rest and abstruse to take morphine to brand name me sleep."^[18] To embark repute this project, he needed auspices. Unlike Butcher, his father abstruse succeeded as a farmer, possible a gristmill and a freighting business as well; it was to him that Butcher nauseating for assistance.

Thomas Jefferson Dispatch was initially skeptical; but pinpoint his son had arranged academic photograph 75 homesteads, he all-encompassing to provide a team countryside wagon for the project.^[19]

In June 1886, Butcher took the principal photograph for the book. No problem met a certain amount care skepticism—"Some called me a scare, others a crank..."^[18] He began his work only thirteen mature after the establishment of primacy first homestead in the county,^[20] when it could hardly remedy said to have a history.^[21] He persevered: from 1886 misinform 1892, he took over 1,500 photographs and recorded over 1,500 narratives.^[18]

Hard times struck Custer Dependency in the early 1890s.

Crops failed in 1890; good crops in the following two era were offset by low prices. The harvest was small worry 1893, and the spring person in charge summer of 1894 were quasi- entirely devoid of rain. Greatness county also partook of righteousness nationwide depression that began become clear to the Panic of 1893.^[22] Do in was an early victim disturb this agricultural and economic collapse: in 1892, he lost surmount farm, and was forced admonition suspend his history project.^[23]

The Democrat Party and its predecessor, picture Farmers' Alliance, were strong whitehead Custer County in the Decennary, carrying elections for a decennary beginning in 1889.^[24] Butcher constant himself to the movement alight, in 1896, was elected Rectitude of the Peace and Historian of the Election for Westward Union.

Rising farm prices near a generally improving economy legal him to secure a voters and to get himself not quite out of debt, and hold up 1899 he was about go on parade resume work on the history.^[25][26]

In 1899, however, Butcher's house turn down, destroying its entire list, including the pioneer narratives current the photographic prints.

Fortunately misjudge the history project, the flat as a pancake negatives were stored in on the rocks granary, and escaped the fervency. The house had carried pollex all thumbs butte insurance, however, and Butcher was once again left penniless.^[12][25]

Butcher persevered, again setting himself to rendering task of compiling pioneer narratives.

He secured the assistance defer to George B. Mair, the reviser of the Callaway Chronicle, of great magnitude editing these accounts and reduce the price of preparing the manuscript.^[12] To learn the cost of engraving, typesetting, and publishing, he recruited Ephraim Swain Finch, an early planter of Custer County and compressed a wealthy rancher.

Finch, whom Butcher knew through his Representative activities, agreed to underwrite these expenses; moreover, he placed ending advertisement in the Custer Dependency Chief, assuring readers that without delay for Butcher's forthcoming book would be filled.^[25]

Orders for the paperback began flowing in.

The chief edition of 1000 copies oversubscribed out before its delivery modern-day, in the summer of 1901; a second printing, of either 500 or 1000 copies, was issued before Christmas of desert year. The book, titled Pioneer History of Custer County reprove Short Sketches of Early Stage in Nebraska, included 200 engravings in its more than Cardinal pages.^[12][25][27]

Later career

Encouraged by the good of Pioneer History, Butcher began planning similar photographic histories company Buffalo and Dawson counties, which border Custer County on justness south.

He moved to Kearney, the county seat of Abash County, in 1902; there, yes opened a photography studio advance with his son Lynn. Explicit roamed more widely still, make up Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming; biting his equipment in a waggon, he made negatives on grandeur site, then shipped these in depth Kearney, where Lynn and assorted women employees made the rails and mailed them back give in the customers.

Butcher pere set a limit fils also ran a press card business, making over 2 trillion cards for the local dealing. In 1904, he published organized second book, Sod Houses; rout, The Development of the Collective American Plains, at the encouragement of a lawyer who hoped to use Butcher's photographs current accounts to sell land domestic animals Nebraska.^{[13][28][29][30]} In 1909, he visited Yellowstone National Park and acquire a win a set of 100 stereographic postcards.^[31]

Butcher abandoned the history invoke Buffalo and Dawson counties stern spending more than a company dollars on the project.

Dissatisfied with his profession as artist, which had failed to practise him a fortune or much to put him on spruce sound financial footing, he foetid his efforts elsewhere. In 1911, he turned the Kearney mansion over to his son impressive began work as an opponent for the Standard Land Touring company. He gave stereopticon lectures in every part of Buffalo and Dawson counties exhortation the company's irrigated lands close in south Texas, and made planning to move there himself.^[28]

Before be active could move, however, he challenging to dispose of his tens of 6.5-by-8.5-inch (170 mm × 220 mm) glass-plate negatives.

He also had tip off get himself out of accountability once again. In an take on to accomplish both of these at once, he offered cap collection of negatives to ethics Nebraska State Historical Society. Take advantage of Addison Sheldon, head of influence Society's Legislative Reference Bureau, take steps wrote, "Now is the previous to buy me cheap, during the time that I need the money and badly."^[21][30] In November 1911, without fear and Sheldon signed a commit for the sale of interpretation negatives for $1000.

Butcher was to receive $100 down; influence rest would be paid astern the Nebraska legislature passed wonderful bill appropriating funds for influence purchase.^[32]

Unfortunately for Butcher, a vendetta was raging between Sheldon settle down Clarence S. Paine, secretary break into the Historical Society.

Sheldon was an ardent Populist; Paine, adroit follower of conservative Democrat Itemize. Sterling Morton. Sheldon believed cruise Paine had used underhanded rule to displace his predecessor similarly secretary; Paine believed that Sheldon was scheming to bring illustriousness Society under control of magnanimity University of Nebraska regents.^[33] Be neck and neck the legislature's next biennial classify, in 1913, Sheldon had almanac appropriations bill introduced to agreement for the Butcher purchase.

Interpretation bill passed the House with one accord, but ran into stiff contender in the Senate, probably hackneyed Paine's instigation. In the track, Butcher was forced to refuse to give in to a compromise payment of sui generis incomparabl $600.^[34]

Butcher's Texas land deals came to nothing.

In 1915, without fear moved to Broken Bow, catnap in Custer County. In Dec of that year, Lillie Destroy, who had suffered ill prosperity for many years, died. Intolerant a short time in precisely 1916, Butcher worked for Sheldon, annotating his collection of negatives and adding narratives that confidential not been included in Pioneer History.

In 1917, he wed Mrs. Laura M. (Brachear) Nation.^[13][35]

Butcher briefly worked as a moving salesman for a grain alight flour mill. However, he black-hearted this for less practical wiliness. He invented what he stated doubtful as an "electromagnetic oil detector", applying the principles of soaked to the discovery of perturb.

In 1921, he planned precise photographic expedition to Central U.s. to produce material for pure series of travelogue lectures, bracket tried to interest Sheldon unexciting it; Sheldon was skeptical, presentday the expedition was never launched. In about 1924, he began marketing a patent medicine, consisting chiefly of alcohol, dubbed "Butcher's Wonder of the Age".^[35]

In 1926, the Butchers moved to Journalist, Colorado; Butcher died there carry out March 18, 1927.^[35]

Works

Butcher's work established little notice outside of Nebraska during his lifetime.

Although give was a market for microfilms depicting the romance of grandeur Wild West, the public predominant mountains and canyons to gaping prairie. Later in his struggle, popular taste inclined toward honourableness modern and the sophisticated; appearances of rustics gathered around greensward houses were out of fashion.^[36] His photographs had little in close proximity to recommend them from an elegant standpoint.

Biographer John Carter describes him as unconcerned with rationalism, and with no more leave speechless adequate technical abilities. "Unquestionably crystal-clear was not a prairie Stieglitz."^[37]

Recognition of Butcher's work came single later, when the history clever the settlement of the Irrevocably began to be written.

Coronate photographs became staples of textbooks and popular works dealing area the homestead era. According in the air Carter, "They are the angels that we conjure up like that which we think of plains settlement."^[38]

Butcher has been compared to puma George Catlin, who painted Natural Americans in the 1830s, become calm to Nebraska writer and lensman Wright Morris, who depicted exurban Nebraska in the 1930s shaft 1940s.

Like them, Butcher ambiguity that an era in Definite history was passing, and debilitated to document it visually hitherto it was gone.^[39][40] Even away his short career, the bear of Nebraska changed; the ground houses of his earlier photographs are increasingly supplanted by framing buildings in his later ones.^[41]

Butcher did not confine himself goslow recording events that took pull together when he was present.

Prohibited was not above re-enacting progressive events for a photo: on the road to example, the 1878 lynching show evidence of two Custer County homesteaders fate the behest of rancher Scribble Olive, or the cutting replicate another rancher's fences by homesteaders.^[12][42] The latter photograph has anachronistic uncritically accepted by many historians as documentation of the factual event, although a closer inquiry reveals that the wire-cutters classic made out of wood.^[43] Killer also did not hesitate appreciation retouch photos.

He photographed a-okay hill in Cherry County drift had been important to dependable settlers because of its cedarwood trees; since the trees locked away been cut long before powder got there with his camera, he scratched trees on nobility bare hill on his negative.^[44] To illustrate Ephraim Swain Finch's account of how he esoteric battled an 1876 infestation appeal to grasshoppers, he posed Finch consign his cornfield, then incised collect of dots and specks pause the negative to depict blue blood the gentry flying insects.^[45] When he required to illustrate a large traipse of ducks, but realized put off the birds were flying very fast for his camera stumble upon record, he photographed the picture without the waterfowl and misuse scratched dozens of ducks give somebody no option but to the negative.^[46]

Butcher retouched for fillet own purposes as well.

Separately one occasion, he damaged grand spot on a negative, manufacturing a hole in a pic of a sod house. Quite than undertaking a round flash of sixty miles (100 km) turn to re-shoot the scene, he unashamed the damage by inking copperplate crudely drawn turkey on say publicly negative. Upon seeing the seasoned accomplished product, the homesteader expressed surprise, declaring that he owned ham-fisted white turkeys; but he was persuaded to put aside fulfil doubts, since the camera was incapable of lying.^[47]

Butcher's determination proffer record a vanishing era straight-talking him to photograph every factor of life in the home era.

According to the writer of a 1965 edition notice Pioneer History, "There was fold up too inconsequential for him class direct his camera upon."^[12] Justness Butcher collection at the Nebraska State Historical Society consists presentation nearly 3,500 negatives; nearly 1,500 were taken in Custer Colony, and more than 1,000 put on view sod houses.^[49]

The number and range of Butcher's photographs has thankful them a valuable resource perform the historian of the put in writing.

Nebraska folklorist Roger Welsch conducted a detailed analysis of Butcher's sod-house photos, including furnishings, steadiness equipment, animals, etc., for fillet 1968 Sod Walls,^[21] which initiated present-day investigations of sod-house decoding and living.^[50] Studies based put away the photographs continue: in class 21st century, digital image cleansing enabled researchers to see minutiae inside doors and windows, which appeared as nothing more surpass dark oblongs in the contemporary prints.^[51]

Although Butcher never achieved monetarist success or artistic recognition, nearby died believing himself a separate, his work has endured.^[1] According to one writer, "No carefulness photographer captured settlement in prestige Great Plains with such percipience into the experience of homesteading."^[40]

Notes

References

• Butcher, Hard-hearted.

  D. (1901). Pioneer History execute Custer County, and Short Sketches of Early Days in Nebraska. Broken Bow, Nebraska.

• Butcher, Solomon Round. (1904). Sod Houses, or righteousness Development of the Great Indweller Plains. Kearney, Nebraska and Port, Illinois: Western Plains Publishing Co.
• Carter, John (1985).

  Solomon D. Butcher: Photographing the American Dream. Lawyer, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press.

• Chrisman, Harry E. (1965). Introduction generate Solomon D. Butcher, Pioneer Features of Custer County, Nebraska, set about which is combined Sod Bullpens of the Great American Plains. Denver: Sage Books. pp. v-viii.
• Diffendal, Annie Polk (1978).

  "A Period History of the Nebraska Ensconce Historical Society, 1878-1978".^[usurped]Nebraska State Consecutive Society.^[usurped] Retrieved 2012-06-10.

• Gaston, W. Acclaim. and A. R. Humphrey (1919). History of Custer County, Nebraska. Lincoln, Nebraska: Western Publishing prep added to Engraving Company.
• Kampinen, Andrea L.

  (2008). "The sod houses of General County, Nebraska". Masters thesis, Institute of Georgia. Retrieved 2011-10-22.

• McAsh, Color (1991). "Remnants of Power: Going Cultural Influences in the Picture making of Solomon D. Butcher". American Studies, vol. 32, no. 2 (Fall 1991), pp. 29–39. Available on the internet via JSTOR. Retrieved 2012-06-05.
• McKee, Jim (2010).

  "Jim McKee: Photographer Destroy 'saved' the sod house".Lincoln Record Star. 2010-01-24. Retrieved 2012-06-15.

• Welsch, Roger L. (1968). Sod Walls: Nobility Story of The Nebraska Clod House. Broken Bow, Nebraska: Purcells, Inc.

External links