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This article is to serve as a guide to help owners of "cabinet cards" (cardboard photos) taken in Washington date their photos more accurately. Although a few of these photographers were in other places around town, the main photography studio in Washington was the east half of the upper level of what is now Holland's Caramelcorn.
This article will be updated as more card-back examples are found.
William Bogardus—From as early as 1854, Bogardus worked in Washington as a daguerreotype photographer. He enlisted and went off to the Civil War in 1862 and died from wounds received in battle in April 1865. He is buried in Old City Cemetery. His funeral was on the same day as President Lincoln's.
Jazer Sickler - Sickler is advertised as a photographer in the November 11, 1858, issue of the Washington Investigator.
Thomas Blair Wilson—Born in 1839 in Pennsylvania, he married Mary Broughton in 1867 in Fulton County, Illinois. By 1870, he was established as a photographer in Washington. He most likely worked until his death in 1881 at the age of 42.
Wilson & Taff - This is Thomas B. Wilson and Alexander Taff. Taff and Wilson most likely worked together in the 1870s in Washington. Alexander Taff was a photographer in Metamora in the 1880s and soon relocated out of the area.
Hamlet Parker - In 1870, Hamlet Parker, also known as "P.H." Parker, moved to Washington with his parents and started a photography business. By 1880, he was out of the game and had begun a string of odd jobs around the city. His wife, Mary (Foster) Parker, was sent to the Bartonville Asylum in the early 1900s, which sent Parker on a downward decline, and while still living in Washington, he was inexplicably found dead on a Cairo, Illinois, street in 1914.
Wilson & Parker—The above-mentioned Thomas Wilson and the above-mentioned P.H. Parker were partners at one point.
George Frank Lasswell—Lasswell worked as a photographer in Washington in the late 1870s and early 1880s. He then relocated to Peoria in the early 1900s.
William O. Sharp was born in 1854 in Hancock County, Illinois, and spent most of his life there. In 1885, he worked as a photographer in Washington, but he switched to the newspaper business and relocated back to Hancock County.
George W. Freese worked as a photographer for many years, but that was only one of his talents. He loved working with his hands and creating beautiful things out of nothing. He lived on a farm between Washington and Eureka before relocating to warmer climates, and by the time he died in 1929, he had accumulated an entire museum's worth of items in his Lakeland, Florida, home.
John Roy Tankersley was born in 1837 in Virginia. Early on, he ran a tavern in Pennsylvania and eventually began his photography in Bloomington by 1870. Tankersley only spent two years in Washington, from around 1886 to 1888, before moving on to do photography work in Bunker Hill, Illinois.
Charles L.W. Snyder was born in 1864 in Washington. He worked as a photographer around 1887 for a short time. In that same year, he wed Eva Brady of Eureka, relocated there and moved on to El Paso taking up different trades.
Thomas Foley - 1888
Eller Brothers - This business is most likely twins Manuel and Samuel Eller, born in 1870, who worked as a photography team in Washington around 1893 and probably earlier. The two moved on to Peoria by 1900 and left the photography business.
W.B. Morgan - 1895
Robert Johns - 1897
Milton Henry Schlotterback—Born around 1860 in Indiana, Schlotterback made his way to Central Illinois by the late 1800s and married Freda Siebold in 1898 in Peoria. He worked as a photographer in Washington from 1900 (possibly earlier) until 1906. He gave up the camera and moved to California for many years before returning home to Peoria for the final portion of his life.
Charles Marquard - Born in Ohio in 1864, Marquard spent only a short time in Washington, from around 1906-1908. Marquard is responsible for all of the photographs in the 1906 book "Picturesque Washington."
J. P. Bergeron—Bergeron was a creative photographer who also tinkered with inventing. He spent parts of 1908 and 1909 in Washington. After his stint there, Bergeron moved north and worked as a photographer in cities like Dekalb and Plainfield.
Joseph Ray Cubbison - Cubbison purchased Bergeron's photography business in 1909 at the age of 22 years old and only spent a few months in Washington at most. Almost as quickly as he arrived, he returned to his home in Sharon, Pennsylvania.
Harriet Culley - Harriet was maybe here a month.
Cullen Hopewell Christ - Christ was born in Pennsylvania in 1882 and arrived in Washington in 1909, operating as a photographer into the 1920s. In the 1930s and early 1940s, the Christs operated the Daisy Restaurant in town and sold the business in 1941.
Christ's closing of his photo studio in the 1920s coincides with the last remaining breaths of the cabinet card industry.
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