Up Close and Personal

By Bonnie G. Wilson

Look deeply into a photograph. Study its characteristics. You will find that searching an old photo is like solving a mystery. There is more to it than first meets the eye.

Typically, we use old photos to illustrate our writing, the essays we do for class or work. We compose our thoughts and then seek a picture to go with them. But after spending years collecting and preserving old photographs, I now know that photos can do so much more than provide handy illustrations. They hold unique clues about our history. They stimulate exploration and lead us to insights that challenge or reinforce what we think and what we write. From our first look at a photo, we begin asking questions and these lead us to research, which leads us to developing further knowledge. Through photos, we can enter a historical period, walk around in it, and see what we find.

Questioning is the most useful aid to investigating an image. My 30 years of viewing photographs at the Minnesota Historical Society have led me to realize that images raise questions. When people showed me family photos, I studied them closely for clues and then asked questions about what I observed. These family members were eager to tell me who was in the picture, but for me the most fascinating aspects were the activities, buildings, and details within the photo.

If someone from St. Hilaire brought me a photograph of a hardware store like the Holmes Brothers store, I would peer closely at the business interior, for interiors contain an encyclopedia of information about life at the time. If someone brought me an image taken in 1906 of a baseball team, I would examine the huge differences in uniforms and equipment from then to now. I never tire of looking at photos. Each one brings me into a different place and time and teaches me something about life there and then.

Looking closely at a moment in time
The photo I want to examine with you is the "Minnesota Reflections" image titled "Boy Sawing Wood Downtown." My first impulse when viewing a photo is to read the caption, but I try to resist. Captions can prejudice our viewing by telling us what to see. In contrast, our careful observation of a photo stimulates our curiosity and raises questions that we might not pose if we think the caption tells us all we can know.

Our eyes go first to the center of the image where significant visual information commonly rests. After viewing thousands of photos, I have come to realize that most photographers place what they want to feature in the middle of the picture. In this case, a young boy holds a bucksaw on a large piece of wood. His knee is balanced on the wood while he grasps the handles of the saw. I wonder if this is a visual record of child labor in Red Wing or a manly pose for the camera.

Looking intensely helps me feel that once upon a time this real boy worked hard on a real street. What can we know about him and his life from the evidence in the photo? The answers connect his world to ours.

As I look to the right side, I speculate on the reason for a wood pile on a main street of this town. I suspect that wood plays a big role in heating here, and that this photo was probably taken in the winter. The boy's warm clothing, the blanket on the horse, and the glimpse of another person's coat and mitten on the left margin of the photo confirm my assumption that this was a cold day in town.

Behind the boy, I notice a horse-drawn wagon and buggy on the street. This shows me that automobiles are not common vehicles of the time and that the local people get around by animal power.

Then I look at the two upright poles in the center and to the left. The center pole is most likely a telephone or electric pole. The spikes on the side of the pole indicate that it can be climbed for service and repair. If this town has electricity and telephone service, the photo must have been taken towards the end of the 19th century. Technology details help in dating photos, especially ones that have incomplete captions.

The second pole carries more information. Its sign reads "R. L. Grondahl & Co., Drygoods & Carpet." Signs provide clues to locations, dates, and to the commerce of the time. We can check regional gazetteers to pinpoint where and when Grondahl was in business. If we want to know more, city directories can tell us what kind of business this was, who owned it, and how many other dry goods stores were competing for customers.

In the background, I see several substantial buildings, two and three stories tall. What businesses did they hold? What did people buy when they came to this street? We can check insurance maps, real estate maps, directories, and gazetteers to see what businesses were in these buildings and others nearby. This gives us a picture of the local commercial scene and indicates what the townspeople found necessary and desirable.

I also wonder if these stone or brick buildings still stand today. Is this a town that grew, prospered, and saved its historic buildings? If so, I can go to the same spot and take a new photo to compare the scenes, then and now.

After I study the scene within a photo, I look at the photo as an object. I see that this one is square, brown and white, and frayed at the edges. Books on the history of photography tell us that this size, shape, and coloration indicates that it is a snapshot from an amateur box camera of the late 1890s. Professional photographers of the time used glass plate negatives that were 5-by-7 inches or 8-by-10 inches and produced larger prints. Because different types of silver particles were used to make photographic images before 1900, most 19th century photos are brown and white. The ragged, torn edges tell me that the photo was not mounted on a backing board like many early snapshots, and was most likely intended for a photo album.

Beyond the edges of the photograph
Now that we have posed questions and gleaned some information from observation, we can go to outside sources for additional answers. Primary and secondary sources, such as newspapers, census records, and local history books, will help us become further involved in this little fragment of history. Contrasting the life and times seen in a photo may help us see our present lives in a new way and help us gain an appreciation for some of the social, technological, economic, and political changes that influence us today. In addition, exploring outside of the photo can be a fun exercise in historical sleuthing.

Our first stop for information is that caption that I avoided when I first looked at this photograph. Captions are generally published alongside or written on the back of the photo. In this case, the caption tells us the boy's name is Oscar Youngdahl, the street is Bush Street, and the date is 1898. These facts lead me to a search in census records for Oscar and his family, in directories, gazetteers and maps for Bush Street, and in newspapers and local histories to find out about life at that time.

I find in the 1900 Federal Census that Oscar was one of four children of Olivia Youngdahl of Red Wing, Minnesota. He was born in March 1888 and his mother immigrated from Sweden. His father was not listed. From cemetery records and the local historical society, I learned that his father, Ake, died of cancer in June of the year this photo was taken. Perhaps Ake took this photo of his son acting grown up because the boy would soon have to be a man of the household.

Oscar's photo was taken on Bush Street, near 216 and 218, the address of R. L. Grondahl & Co. By checking in city directories and gazetteers, I find that this Red Wing dry goods and carpet store was established in the 1880s and continued in business until the 1940s. However, Grondahl & Co. was not always in this location. In fact, it was only at this address in 1897-98. So the sign on the street verifies the date of the photo.

What is a dry goods store? "Dry goods" was a common term meaning fabrics and ready-to-wear clothing. Grondahl's was one of many small dry goods stores that served this community. The people of Red Wing had lots of clothing choices if they had the means to buy them.

Oscar would have been very familiar with Bush Street for the Youngdahls lived at 707 Main, just up the street and around the corner. According to the Sanborn Insurance Maps of 1902, the buildings in the background of this photo housed drug stores, jewelry stores, a shoe store, and more dry goods stores. They maps also show the buildings on the sidewalk next to Oscar, buildings we can't see in the photo. The boy was sawing wood in front of the Red Wing Printing Company, publisher of the Red Wing Daily Republican at 220 Bush Street.

The telephone or electric pole behind Oscar reminds me to look at other photos of Red Wing in the "Minnesota Reflections" database. From them I see that Red Wing was well wired in 1900 as poles and wires commonly appear in the photos. From a local history book I learn that the telephone company was established in Red Wing in 1892.

I was curious to learn if the background buildings are still standing today. I asked a friend who lives in Red Wing, and she confirmed they are still there. Today they house gift shops and a thrift shop instead of dry goods stores. The next time I visit her, I am going to take a snapshot from the same location and compare the two.

As I spend time with this photo, I wonder what life was like in Red Wing in 1898. To help me get a feel for the era, I read a local newspaper, the Red Wing Daily Republican. The advertisements provide guides to prices and popular goods. The mittens at the photo's edge would have cost from 25 cents to $2, and winter coats ranged from $10 to $45. Ladies corsets and patent medicines were much in demand.

In 1898, the national news featured America's war with Spain in Cuba and the Philippines, known as the Spanish-American War. State news included bills in Congress to open up more land to homesteaders. The local town news was largely about meetings and social events, but there were accounts of the local members of a Minnesota National Guard regiment heading for the Philippines. Oscar may have heard Olivia discuss some of these topics with friends and family, or overheard them in conversations while he was spending time on Bush Street.

The result of careful study
I chose this photo from "Minnesota Reflections" because I like how it left evidence from more than a century ago of child's life in a small town. Not all photos contain as many clues to the past, but all raise questions. Seeking the answers to those questions brings the people to life, helping us learn about them, their businesses, the town they're building, and the events that affected them. On the search for these answers we learn a lot about other people and little about ourselves and where we came from.

Bonnie G. Wilson was the photographic archivist at the Minnesota Historical Society before her retirement in Spring 2005.