John C. H. Grabill Collection
Photographs of frontier life in South Dakota and Wyoming, late
nineteenth century
Collection digitized? Yes. Catalog records with associated
digital
images are available in the Prints
and Photographs Online Catalog. (The same images are presented on the Library
of Congress Meeting
of Frontiers site.)
The one hundred and eighty-eight photographs sent by John C.H. Grabill to
the Library of Congress for copyright protection between 1887 and 1892 are
thought to be the largest surviving collection of this gifted, early Western
photographer's work. Grabill's remarkably well-crafted, sepia-toned images
capture the forces of western settlement in South Dakota and Wyoming and document
its effects on the area's indigenous communities.
The collection includes a visual record of railroad development, coaches and
wagons, mining, smeltering, and milling, freighting, emerging cities and towns,
parades, cattle roundups and branding, sheepherding, prospecting, hunting,
and Chinese immigrants, as well as landscapes. A number of the images portray
the Lakota Sioux living on or near the Cheyenne River and the Pine Ridge reservations
and their contact with U.S. military and government agents, and with William "Buffalo
Bill" Cody. Some of the photographs were taken only days after the 1890
massacre at Wounded Knee near Pine Ridge.
Very little is known about this talented, commercial photographer, but the
fact that Grabill immediately set up a studio when he arrived in Sturgis, South
Dakota, in 1866, suggests that he had previously acquired his photographic
skills. Information printed on the photographic mounts indicates that he also
had studios in Deadwood, Lead City, and Hot Springs, South Dakota, in Colorado,
and possibly in Chicago, and that he was the "official photographer of
the Black Hills and F.P. [Fort Pierre] R.R. and Home Stake Mining Co."
Note: Information for this entry was compiled in the late 1970's
for inclusion in: Special Collections in the Library of Congress: A Selective
Guide. Compiled by Annette Melville. Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress,
1980. The information was revised in 2002.
U.S. Library of Congress. Reference Department. Guide to the Special Collections
of Prints & Photographs in the Library of Congress (Washington: 1955.
NE53.W3A52),
compiled by Paul Vanderbilt, no. 301.
U.S. Library of Congress. Prints and Photographs Division. Viewpoints,
a Selection from the Pictorial Collections of the Library of congress; a
Picture Book by Alan Fern, Milton Kaplan, and the staff of the Prints and
Photographs Division (Washington: 1975. 223 p. illus. E178.5.U54 1974;
reprint. New York, Arno Press: 1976. E178.5.U54 1976), no 42, 123-124.
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