Stanton Photos

I was focused on the multi-generational aspect of the Stanton Studio(s) in my last post and I neglected to provide many examples of photos taken by those studios. So, today I want to correct that.

Photos by the Stanton Studio in Springfield, OH, run by husband and wife M.C. and Rosetta Stanton, appear regularly in the local Springfield newspaper in the early 20th century. Often, but not always, the photos are connected to social notices of various types.

Below are a couple of examples of those social notice photos. The examples I’ve chosen of this type happen to feature two of the Stanton daughters. In each instance, though, there’s seemingly no specific reason the daughter gets her photo in the social column of the paper. Maybe this kind of social notice photo also served as a type of general Stanton Studio advertising? Not sure, but that would be one hypothesis.

In any case, here’s a photo from 1914: daughter Martha, pictured here, is 14 years old:

You might recall from the previous post that when Martha Stanton grows up she becomes a photographer who works with her parents (and also eventually also for her photographer grandfather, I.C. Stanton).

Next up, I have selected a photo of Mary Stanton, the middle Stanton daughter. She’s 19 years old when this picture appeared in the newspaper in February 1915.

I didn’t find any photos of the third and eldest daughter, Ruby Stanton, before she gets married to John Earle McArtor in 1916. But I did find the following cute photo from 1917 of Ruby and her baby daughter, “Peg” (Margaret Rosetta McArtor). This photo appeared in the newspaper as part of large montage of photos of other young women:

I should note that there are plenty of photos by the Stanton Studio of random people not related to the Stantons who also appear in the newspaper. 😉 But since I happened to find photos of the 3 Stanton daughters, I thought it would be fun to include these photos taken at their parents’ studio.

In general, M.C. and Rosetta Stanton built quite a reputation in Springifield, OH in the early 20th century for taking photos of babies. For many years, they were even the official photographers of all the childen who were entered into the annual Springfield Daily News baby contest. Their experience with the annual Baby Contest also factored into the Stanton Studio ads. For example, here’s an ad from 1906 for the Stanton Studio that includes a “thank you” from the parents of the 1906 baby contest winner:

For weeks during the annual competition, the newspaper would run pages with photos of all the contestants for newspaper readers to vote on. The contest seems to have been a big deal: the prize money in 1910, for example, was $200 in gold (the equivalent of $7000 in 2024). This following page from 1910 promotes the contest in general with the rules and the prizes to be awarded, with photos by the Stantons of some of the contestants:

Here’s a sample of another type of page that appeared daily during the run of the contest. Each page like this would show just a a selection of the contestants, with photos and mini bios. All the photos are by the Stanton Studio. (You had to regularly buy the paper in order to see all the contestant photos, I think, and also in order to get an official “ballot” to use to vote in the contest.)

The Stanton Studio produced studio-portraits, too, of course, and not just photos in the newspaper for social notes or contests.

The studio portrait we bought recently on eBay had special instructions printed on the back for how to order “Printz Photos” — which were apparently a particular style of multiple smaller copies of the cabinet-card size photo. Interesting. We haven’t run across that type of specially “Printz Photos” offered by other studios, even studios who offer ways to get multiple copies of a photo.

I have focused today on photos taken by the Stanton studio run by M.C. and Rosetta Stanton in Springfield, Ohio. But since, in my last post I talked about the work done by all 3 generations of Stanton photographers, I will close this post with one sample each from other Stanton studios. First up, a photo that appeared in the newspaper from the the I.B. Stanton studio in Urbana, Ohio.

Finally, here’s a photo from the McArtor studio in NJ run by Ruby Stanton McArtor and her husband. This photo ties it all up the story of the Stanton Studios quite nicely, since it’s a photo of the Springfield Stanton photographers, M.C. and Rosetta Stanton, albeit long after they were retired.