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 "Mr. Caldwell and Lady," who took Dexter Andrews's rooms on Columbia Street in November 1850; Jessie Aufrecht, who kept a studio with her husband Gustave at 60 Calhoun in 1880–81; Rose Allen, who continued her late husband James O. Allen's studio at 129 Broadway until 1886; Belle M. Jones and Millie Wills, enumerated by the census of 1880 inside Maurice Jones's studio as photographer and assistant; Ida M. Close, listed under her married name, "Mrs. Daniel Austin," as a photographer at 156 Horace Street in 1893–95; Anna Kieffer, who kept a home studio at 621 Calhoun in 1909; Lucille Paxton and Lillian Shumaker, who in 1919 were co-proprietors of the Vogue Studio at 828 Calhoun, advertising "Portraits that Please Particular People" — Shumaker afterward joined the staff of the Erwin Studio; Bessie L. Meisser, listed at 239 West Lewis in 1925; and Elfrieda Schanz, who ran the Schanz Studio with her brother Paul after their father's death. The listing pattern of the era names these women mostly through their husbands, but in three cases — Benham's, Allen's, and Paxton and Shumaker's — the record shows women holding studios in their own right, and in a fourth, the census catches two women at work inside a studio the directories credit to a man alone.

Sources:

1. John D. Beatty, Directory of Fort Wayne Photographers 1843–1930 — entries for Caldwell, Aufrecht, Allen, Jones, Austin, Kieffer, Paxton, Shumaker, Meisser, and the Vogue Studio, citing the Fort Wayne city directories and the federal censuses as there listed.