The first pictures: a daguerreian on Michigan Street, 1858–1861

1858–1861 — the daguerreian and ambrotype era

The first name: The earliest photographer the record reached working in South Bend is C. A. Stover, listed in Craig's Daguerreian Registry as a daguerreian and ambrotypist here from 1858 to 1861. In 1858 and 1859 his rooms stood four doors south of the Post Office, on the second floor; in 1860 and 1861 he was on Michigan Street. He belongs to the trade's first technology — the daguerreotype, a unique image on a silvered copper plate, and its successor the ambrotype — and he worked in the years just before the paper photograph and the carte de visite made the portrait trade a business of volume. No earlier practitioner in this city was found in the records searched for this section: not in the genealogical society's list, which begins in 1863, and not in the registry's Indiana entries beyond Stover's. The record also shows that Stover was not the only hand here at the decade's turn. When Albert McDonald came to South Bend in 1861, the county biography published in 1893 says plainly that he purchased a photograph studio — a going concern changed hands that year, and the man who sold it is not named in any record reached. The city's photographic history therefore opens with one named daguerreian, one anonymous seller, and a trade already established enough to be bought.

Sources:

1. Craig's Daguerreian Registry (craigcamera.com) — the C. A. Stover listing: daguerreian and ambrotypist, South Bend, 1858–1861; four doors south of the Post Office, second floor, 1858–59; Michigan Street, 1860–61.
2. Pictorial and Biographical Memoirs of Elkhart and St. Joseph Counties (Chicago: Goodspeed Brothers, 1893), pp. 394–395 — McDonald "in 1861 he purchased a photograph studio," the evidence that a studio predated him.
3. South Bend Area Genealogical Society, "South Bend and Mishawaka Photographers, 1863–1921" (sbags.org), as harvested by the Indiana Album / Indiana Photographers Project (indianaalbum.com) — the list's own span begins 1863, after Stover's dates.