California: Sacramento

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  California: Central Valley

  Visual Materials

  Contains portraits from Visalia, Tulare County, Fresno County, Modesto, Stockton, Lodi, Merced City, Sacramento, San Jose.

  photCL 581

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  California: Far north cities and towns; Traveling photographers

  Visual Materials

  Contains portraits from Colusa, Red Bluff, Chico, Orland, Ukiah, Ferndale, Lakeport, Eureka, Mendocino City, Fort Jones, Weaverville, Hayden Hill, Crescent City, Alturas, Yreka, Downieville. Several portraits from the C.C. Richardson family album, Chico and Richardson Springs, California. This binder also has cartes-de-visite by traveling photographers, who worked in temporary set-up studios or sometimes worked on railroad cars, moving from town to town. One image shows a group portrait of four men at a table, one with an accordion.

  photCL 581

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  California: San Francisco

  Visual Materials

  A collection of approximately 7,000 cartes-de-visite and cabinet photographs, almost entirely portraits of ordinary people in the American West, photographed between approximately 1860 and 1910. The photographs represent the work of thousands of commercial photographers operating in every state west of the Mississippi, plus Wisconsin, which the collector considered a western state given its frontier role in the migration of photographers from the East to West. The collection includes 23 states and territories, including Hawaii, and a few portraits from British Columbia and Western Canada. There are a relatively small number of photographs from Alaska (1) and Arizona (6), not due to scarcity, but because those parts of the collection were previously dispersed. Portraits taken in California make up about half of the collection, representing established photographers in big cities like San Francisco and Sacramento, as well as lesser-known photographers in sparsely populated mountain towns. The people of the frontier and post-frontier West posing in the portraits are mostly unidentified, though some images do have handwritten names and dates. The majority of people pictured are white, with a relatively small number of portraits of African American, Chinese, Latino, and Indigenous persons. Sitters are of all ages, seen in individual poses or in family groups, in various styles of clothing, hair, jewelry, props, and furniture. Images include soldiers, wedding portraits, mothers with babies, children, frontiersmen, workers with tools, dogs, and occasional outdoor images of buildings or people. This collection was amassed over 35 years and became the primary source material for Mautz's seminal reference work Biographies of Western Photographers (1997). The thousands of imprints, some elaborately illustrated, include the names of several female photographers, such as: Fannie Hoyt, Salt Lake City, Utah; Mrs. E. W. (Eliza) Withington, Ione City, California; and Mrs. C. Klostermann, Eureka, California.

  photCL 581

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  Alaska; Arizona; Arkansas; Southern California

  Visual Materials

  There are few photographs from Alaska (1), Arizona (3) and Arkansas (11). One Arkansas portrait depicts a little boy with a rifle. Southern California photographs include portraits from Los Angeles, San Bernardino, San Diego, Santa Barbara, Ventura, and other locations. There is a portrait of an African American woman and her baby, with a name written on the back, possibly Mrs. H. G. Hodge. In addition, there are several portraits of Italian American families that have names and writing in Italian on the backs (San Luis Obispo).

  photCL 581

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  California: Grass Valley; Nevada City

  Visual Materials

  Collector Carl Mautz acquired some photographs from the William S. May family album in Grass Valley, California around 1990. There are portraits of a young white couple, May and his wife Anna (Conaway) May, and four African Americans - a man, Boz Harrison; a woman, Hannah Harrison; and two girls, Minnie and Fannie Harrison. Anna's father, Carville Conaway, arrived in California from Baltimore in 1851, settling in Grass Valley with his family, who arrived later. The 1850 U.S. Federal Census shows that Carville Conaway had three enslaved people in his household in Baltimore. It is unclear if these are the same people. The tintype of Minnie Harrison has an imprint indicating it was taken in Baltimore. Research information regarding these photographs is in the collection information file. Please see Reader Services for more information. This binder also contains a street view of the Nevada City Courthouse; a group portrait of four men and two horses in Nevada City; and two men in military uniforms.

  photCL 581

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  California, Northern: Nelson Point, Nevada City, Oakland, Oroville, Red Bluff, Redding, Sacramento, Salinas

  Visual Materials

  One portrait of a woman holding a mask over her face (Nevada City); one man in military uniform wearing a button that says "Cal." (Oakland); a group portrait of five cowboys (Oroville); two portraits of men with bicycles (Oroville).

  photCL 581