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Photographers · The people who made Fort Wayne's picture of itself
Almost everything Fort Wayne knows about how it looked before living memory comes through the cameras of its working photographers. They were tradesmen, mostly, with rooms over Columbia and Calhoun Street stores, and their names survive because the city's portraits carry their imprints and because John D. Beatty of the Allen County Public Library's Genealogy Center compiled them, name by name, into a Directory of Fort Wayne Photographers covering 1843 to 1930, from the city directories, the federal censuses, and the newspapers. This section follows that record and carries it forward: the itinerant daguerreians of the canal era, the great studio men of the nineteenth century, the immigrant and women photographers the directories name, the press photographers whose bylines the papers printed, and the two Fort Wayne careers — a Belgian resistance fighter who became the city's teacher of photography, and the twin brothers he mentored — that carried Fort Wayne eyes to the front pages of the world. It ends where the pictures themselves ended up: the archives.
The first cameras: itinerants on Columbia Street
1843 — 1852
A new trade arrives with the canal: Bert J. Griswold's Pictorial History records that the daguerreotype was introduced into Fort Wayne in 1843, the year the Wabash and Erie Canal reached the city. A Mr. Keith — possibly the David…
Charles C. Stevens and the last blockhouse
1852
One sitting, one irreplaceable image: Charles C. Stevens, advertising as "C. C. Stevens and Brother" from June to November 1852 in rooms at the home of John Fairfield on Main Street, made the only known image of the last…
Archibald McDonald, the busiest daguerreian of the fifties
1850 — 1859
From Buffalo to the Phoenix Block: Archibald McDonald worked in Buffalo, New York, in 1848 under his family name, McDonnell, and moved to Fort Wayne in December 1850, opening a studio above B. Mason's store. In February 1851 he…
Byron and Almira Benham: paper pictures and the Ladies Picture Gallery
1856 — 1866
The Civil War era's first studio, kept by a husband and wife: Byron H. Benham was born at Elba, Genesee County, New York, about 1828, worked at Newark, Ohio, in 1853, and moved his family to Fort Wayne in November 1856, taking…
John A. Shoaff and the Shoaff Building
1864 — 1921
The studio that became a building: John A. Shoaff was born in 1836 in Juniata, Perry County, Pennsylvania, and came to Fort Wayne at the age of twelve or fourteen to join his brother Samuel. He graduated from the Methodist…
The solar-camera patent: Joseph Dille, Elisha Poston, and the view from the rooftops
1866 — 1883
A painter, a carpenter, and a patent: Joseph H. Dille was born near Cleveland, Ohio, in 1832 to parents born in Alsace-Lorraine. He appears in the Fort Wayne directory of 1866–67 in partnership with Augustus C. Crane in a…
Carl Sommer, the enduring German
1853; 1869 — 1897
Twenty-five years at the camera, ended by fire: Carl Sommer — the name also appears as Charles Sommers — was born in Baden or Württemberg in 1830. When he declared his citizenship in Allen County in 1856 he claimed to have…
Maurice L. Jones: from the studio chair to the Kodak counter
1878 — 1926
The longest tenure in the field: Maurice LaMott Jones was born in North Manchester, Indiana, on 11 August 1848, served in several Indiana regiments during the Civil War — the 39th and 118th Indiana Infantry and the Eighth Indiana…
Frank R. Barrows and "the finest gallery in the State"
1880 — 1900
Twenty years, three addresses, one boast: Frank Rufus Barrows was born at Sturgis, Michigan, in August 1854 and arrived in Fort Wayne in 1880, opening a studio with Frank H. Clayton at 18 West Berry Street, a room that had been…
William Salzmann, photographer to the German city
1879 — 1901
A studio opposite the Cathedral: William Salzmann was born in Germany in October 1834 and immigrated to New York in 1868. In Fort Wayne he opened a studio at 150 Calhoun Street in 1879 that catered to the city's large German…
Felix Schanz: the glass plates
1881 — 1935
The most influential Fort Wayne photographer of his generation: Felix Schanz was born on 15 April 1861 in Alsace-Lorraine, a son of Casper and Catherine (Hauter) Schanz. His father died while he was young; educated in Germany, he…
Charles W. Miner and the new courthouse
1894 — 1912
The photographer of the courthouse's first days: Charles Winslow Miner was born at Columbia City on 26 January 1866. He began as a traveling photographer, visiting Canada and specializing in landscape work. Arriving in Fort Wayne…
George J. Parrot, the children's photographer
1894 — 1915
A studio run like a nursery: George J. Parrot was born in Fort Wayne about 1871 and returned to the city by way of Warsaw, opening a studio in 1894 at 62 Calhoun. In 1901 he moved to 21–23 West Berry, Frank Barrows's former…
Edward F. Perrey, the city's commercial eye
1897 — 1934
Fort Wayne-born, and the papers' photographer before papers had them: Edward F. Perrey was born in Fort Wayne on 28 July 1868, a son of Joseph J. and Adeline Perrey, attended the Cathedral School, and married Mary Diebold in…
The women of the trade
1850 — 1925
Named in the record, mostly as wives and widows — but named: Almira Benham, who kept her own Ladies Picture Gallery in 1858, has her entry above. The directory record names the others: a Mrs. Caldwell, billed with her husband as…
The newcomers' studios: Roggen, Copenolle, Ozaki, Kaung
1902 — 1935
The trade in an immigrant city: Adolph Roggen was born in Germany in 1864, immigrated in 1873, and reached Fort Wayne by way of Chicago, Galveston, Deadwood, Nebraska, Iowa, and Ohio, keeping a studio at 1122 Calhoun from 1902 to…
Washington Blake, the Cute Studio, and a name the record does not finish
1904 — 1941
One address, three hands, one borrowed name: Washington Blake was a Missouri native, born about 1861, who had worked as a photographer in Indiana and Michigan before Fort Wayne. The censuses of 1910 and 1920 enumerate him as a…
The press photographers
1909 — 2013
The papers bought pictures before they hired men to make them: Edward Perrey, in the entry above, was often contracted by the local newspapers for photographs a generation before either paper kept a staff photographer. The first…
Gabriel DeLobbe: the saboteur who taught Fort Wayne to see
c. 1925 — 2025
From the Ardennes to the Fine Arts Center: Gabriel DeLobbe was born in Charleroi, Belgium, in the mid-1920s — he was fourteen when Germany invaded in 1940 — and by eighteen he was a saboteur in the Belgian resistance, blowing up…
David and Peter Turnley: McClellan Street
1955 — present
The most decorated photographers Fort Wayne ever produced started on one downtown street: David C. Turnley and Peter N. Turnley, twin brothers, were born in Fort Wayne on 22 June 1955, sons of Dr. William Loyd Turnley, an…
Paul Watters, Daniel Baker, and the school-picture era
1949 — present
The trade after the directory ends: Beatty's directory closes in 1930, and the studio record after it rests on thinner paper, but two careers bridge it. Paul Watters, a 1947 graduate of Central High School, began in photography…
Where the pictures live
The archive layer
What survived, and where it sits: Fort Wayne's photographic memory is held principally by two institutions, both treated at length elsewhere in this history — the History Center in the Museums section, and the Allen County Public…
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