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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 blockhouse of the 1816 fort before it was demolished — the single most consequential photograph of Fort Wayne's first century, taken by a traveling daguerreian who was in the city for one season. Stevens came from Kennebunkport, Maine, as a guest of his cousin Mrs. O. L. Starkey, and the account of the picture's making survives through her daughter, Mrs. Adam Link, who once owned the image: "On the day the picture was made, 'Charley' Munson … was driving his cow to the pasture of the old apple orchard in the present Lakeside. My mother and several others joined him for a walk. When they reached the ruined blockhouse, Mr. Stevens made the picture." He may have been the Stevens who advertised at Portland, Maine, in 1853. The fort he photographed had stood within the memory of people then living; without his one afternoon's work, no likeness of it would exist at all.
Sources:
- John D. Beatty, Directory of Fort Wayne Photographers 1843–1930 — entry for Charles C. Stevens, citing Craig's Daguerreian Directory, p. 358, Griswold, Pictorial History, 1: 143, and the Link family account.