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 Keith who had advertised at Poughkeepsie, New York, in 1841 — was the first to open a studio, and J. L. Hubbell, a second daguerreotype artist, advertised in November and December of the same year at the American House on Columbia Street. Both were itinerants who moved on. The first man to conduct a permanent gallery, Griswold says, was a Polish immigrant born about 1802, I. L. Telliga, known as "Colonel Tellagher," who kept quarters at the Hedekin House about 1844. A newspaper editor remembered him as "a rather eccentric genius" who "did not hesitate to make savage criticisms of the women of Fort Wayne, who, he said, were the ugliest he ever saw, but who, at the same time, wanted very handsome pictures" — and whose camera, he insisted, "would tell the truth."

The rooms changed hands season by season. Henry Trevitt advertised for three weeks in April 1848 at the Hedekin House. F. M. Foster advertised for two weeks in June 1849 in rooms on Columbia Street above B. Mason's store. That November, William E. Hood — almost certainly, on Beatty's identification, William Ewing Hood, born in Fort Wayne on 29 September 1831 and a nephew of the Indian traders William G. and George W. Ewing — advertised his studio under the Times office on Calhoun Street; by May 1850 the eighteen-year-old was working "for a few days only" at Peru, and his later Fort Wayne life, as a hardware merchant and bookkeeper until his death in 1914, had nothing to do with cameras. Charles T. Cornwell advertised from January to March 1850 above the office of Drs. Thompson and Sturgis, and the newspaper judged him "believed to be the best Artist, in this line, that has ever visited the city." Dexter Brimmer Andrews worked briefly in 1850 above Mr. Smith's store at Columbia and Calhoun; the room passed to a Mr. and Mrs. Caldwell, billed as "Mr. Caldwell and Lady," in November 1850. John Cond, an Englishman, advertised above B. Mason's store in May and June 1850. Griswold's list of the first generation adds B. G. Cosgrove, who also painted portraits. None of them stayed long. The trade's permanent era begins with the men of the 1850s, in the entries below.

Sources:

1. Bert J. Griswold, The Pictorial History of Fort Wayne, Indiana (1917), 1: 370 — the 1843 introduction, Keith, Hubbell, Tellagher, and the early list.
2. John D. Beatty, Directory of Fort Wayne Photographers 1843–1930 (Allen County Public Library, The Genealogy Center) — entries for Keith, Hubbell, Telliga, Trevitt, Foster, Hood, Cornwell, Andrews, Caldwell, and Cond, resting on Craig's Daguerreian Directory, the 1850 federal census, and Fort Wayne newspaper advertisements.