Today we meet another early PICT, Hattie Dowe. Miss Dowe was active in the 1860s in eastern Connecticut.
As I’ve mentioned previously, at the start of professional photography (circa 1840 and through the 1850s) the technology to make a photographic image involved making a “daguerreotype”, which was a photo made on piece of metal and normally delivered to the customer in a fancy case. A photographer couldn’t make an extra “print” of a daguerreotype – the customer got just the one photo.
But by the time Miss Dowe was running her studio in eastern Connecticut in 1865, photographic technology had changed. By then customers could buy multiple copies of the same photo, since the photographer could now make the photographic image with a technology that produced a “negative” from which multiple prints could be made.
At first the photos printed this way were small (smaller than a 3″x5″ index card), with the photo print affixed to a piece of cardboard backing. This format is called a “carte de visite” (CDV). Photographers could — and often did — put their studio name and location on the back of a CDV since that information could be pre-printed or stamped onto the piece of cardboard backing.
Here’s an example of a CDV done by Miss Dowe, where the front of the CDV has the photographic image, and the back has Miss Dowe’s studio information (along with a message about copies of the photo being available!):
There aren’t that many digitally available online historical directories from her town, but we did see her studio listed in the 1865 in the New England business directory that lists photographers from all over New England::
In the 1870 census Miss Dowe is listed as an “engraver”, not a photographer. She’s never listed as a photographer again anywhere that we’ve found, actually. After she marries Cady E. Carpenter in 1876, she never even has any occupation listed again in censuses or city directories, although she lives for quite a while after 1876 (she dies in 1919). Here’s her Lifeline, which shows her birth and death dates:
Lifeline for “Hattie” A Dowe [Carpenter]:
Now, you might have thought that the title of this post referred to Miss Dowe changing her name to Mrs. Carpenter after she got married. However, since Hattie Dowe Carpenter doesn’t ever seem to do photography as Mrs. Carpenter, that name change is not really relevant to this post.
No, in fact the “changing names” referred to in today’s post title is actually the changing name of the place where Miss Dowe lived. In the 1865 directory, it’s called “West Killingly”, while on her CDV above it says her studio is in a place called “Danielsonville”. “Danielsonville”, it seems, is the original name for the modern-day borough of “Danielson”, Connecticut which is (and always was) in the town of Killingly.
So, it turns out the idea of areas changing names in Connecticut in the 19th century are the name changes relevant to today’s post. Who knew that doing research on early PICTs would wind up teaching me about the changing names and administrative districts of Connecticut towns.
Unexpected, but fun. 😉
