A blast from the past
Rare glass plate images found in Poultney
POULTNEY — If a picture is worth a thousand words, you could say the historical society is working its way through a giant novel.
Almost 1,000 turn-of-the-century photographic plates were found sitting uncataloged in the society's collection when officials began clearing out an old storage space. The society is having the plates scanned digitally and will produce prints that will be part of an exhibit this summer.
"Nobody ever made a list of everything the historical society had," said President Richard Hanson. "That meant we had to look at them one by one. A lot of them are still in great shape, which is astounding because they were not stored under archival conditions."
Hanson said nobody knew how long the plates had been in the old melodeon factory, which until recently was home to the society's collection, or how they even came into the society's possession.
"Everyone always knew there were stacks of these things and (everyone) said 'someday, somebody will look at them,'" said Ina Smith, who is overseeing the exhibit.
The photos range from portraits to images showing slices of life, such as farmers mowing fields in horse-drawn contraptions to ice harvesting on Lake St. Catherine. One image shows a woman on a dock holding fishing gear and several fish; another, a long-bearded man and two women camping.
Historic houses still standing on the town green can be seen; and a hunter poses by a large deer hung up by an old schoolhouse, which by then had been converted to a meat market.
Most of the pictures are crisp and clear, with a high level of detail.
Smith pointed to her favorite: a portrait of a woman in black stockings hiking up her skirt. "This is a rather risqué portrait for the time," she said. "I just love it."
Smith said the photos were taken at a time when technology was changing, making photography more accessible. Previous to about 1870, she said that photographers had to develop pictures within about five minutes of taking them, making photography outside of the studio too cumbersome for non-professionals.
The development of dry plate technology, however, allowed the amateur photographer to take a picture and then take his or her time bringing it to a darkroom. Soon, most hardware stores, including the one in Poultney, were selling the needed materials.
"It's a little window in time, this 20-, 25-year period where dry-glass photography was at its peak, allowing photographers to go into people's homes and their workplaces," Smith said.
Smith said the photographs have been attributed to two photographers — one professional, one amateur — although she said they didn't know which person took which photos.
The professional was Harry B. Rood. Smith said Rood and his father, Frank M. Rood, owned a photography studio on Main Street from the 1880s to the early 1900s.
"Harry was taking photographs from about 1900 until he died in 1960," Smith said. "He was the start of the professional photographers in town."
Smith said less was known about the amateur, Leon Dewey.
"We hope to ask a number of the older folks in town, 'who remembers some of these people?'" she said. "We know he was a farm laborer in 1900. By 1920 he was married. He did this out of his home — he had a studio with a cloth backdrop."
Dewey came to what Smith described as "rather a sad end."
"He moved to Essex and worked as a chauffer," she said, "There, he was murdered in his home in the 1920s."
Starting May 27, the photos will be on display at the melodeon factory on the East Poultney Green each Saturday and Sunday from 1 to 4 p.m. through Sept. 3. The display coincides with an exhibit titled "Melodeon Action," which shows several melodeons constructed at the factory, including a deconstructed model and two playable ones.
Hanson said as more pictures are made into prints, more will be put on display, and eventually prints will be offered for sale in some form. Smith said the pictures might be made available on the historical society's Web site.
Part of the hope, Hanson said, is that subjects of a number of the photos might be identified by visitors to the exhibit, such as one of a Welch family reunion or another of a group of students inside the Victorian school house around 1900. "There are people alive who'll say 'I know who that is,'" he said. "We hope to have them come in."
Contact Gordon Dritschilo at
gordon.dritschilo@rutlandherald.com.
