Post by grahamew on Feb 6, 2022 13:49:25 GMT -5
Anderton and Hook both made images around Fort Walsh and other posts in Canada in the 1870s - and later in the case of Anderton.
Thomas George Naylor Anderton, also known as George Anderton, was born in or near Leeds, Yorkshire in 1848. He probably emigrated to Canada in the 1870s. According to freepages.rootsweb.com/~anderton/genealogy/articles/tgnanderton.html, the first reference we know of is in 1876 when he worked as an agent for the West Canada Mining Company of Montreal. That same year, he joined the North West Mounted Police in 1876 in Ottawa and was later posted to Fort Walsh in the Cypress Hills, Saskatchewan.
It was while he was serving with the NWMP that he embarked on his career as a photographer, although it is not known whether or not any of the images he took during this period were part of any official Police business. It is said he was the first resident photographer in the North West Territories, working around Fort Walsh from 1876-1879, where he took images of the Indians who lived in the area, including Lakota who had moved across the border following the Battle of the Little Bighorn. It’s also claimed that he took the first photographic image of Sitting Bull, but more on that later.
Discharged from the Police in May 1880, he moved to Fort Benton, Montana where he set up a photographic tent studio with an American photographer, William Culver, with whom he is credited with creating the first photographic images of the Great Falls of the Missouri River. In late 1880, Culver moved to Fort Assiniboine and Anderton was back on his own, working in the Fort Walsh townsite by 1881. By May 1883, he had set up a studio in Medicine Hat and in Summer 1884 he opened another one at Fort Mcleod, working with his younger brother, Alfred H. Anderton. In April 1885 he handed over the management of the studio to his brother and opened a saloon and brewery but after the prohibition of alcohol he returned to photography in April 1889.
In the 1901 census of Alberta, there is a 53 year-old George Anderton, living in Standoff, on one of the Indian Reserves in Southern Alberta with his Blood wife. In 1888, he took an image entitled Blood children and women at Sun dance. Date: 1888; one of the women is labelled Mrs. T George. Anderton.
The Anderton story is complicated slightly because some of his images have been credited to a Litchfield-born Englishman, William Edward Hook (1833 – 1908) - and possibly vice versa.
Hook’s family emigrated to the United States in 1834, but had returned to England by 1851. In 1857, he married Eleanor Jane Dore (circa 1833-1914) with whom he had six children. He moved back to the USA in 1867 and opened a photography studio in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin. In February of 1875, he was joined by two of his sons, Theodore and William Edward, Jr.
“In 1877, Hook closed his photography studio in [Chippewa Falls] Wisconsin, and he and his surviving son, William, worked as traveling photographers from a home base in Missoula, Montana. Over the next four years, they travelled and captured images throughout Montana and Wyoming, including Yellowstone National Park, Alberta, Northwest Territory, and the Canadian Northwest Rockies. According to Hugh Dempsey, Hook had initially established himself at Fort Benton, then travelled north to Fort Whoop-Up and eventually made his way up to Fort Calgary.
journals.lib.unb.ca/index.php/MCR/article/download/17637/22328?inline=1
By 1881, he established a photography studio in Marquette, Michigan, from which he marketed his images of the American West.” archives.yale.edu/agents/people/59739
However, he headed out West again to Manitou Springs, Colorado in 1885 and having brought the remainder of his family over from England, he moved to Colorado Springs in 1890 and continued to take photographs there, such as this one:![]()
Several of his photos can be found here: digitalcollections.ppld.org/digital/collection/p15981coll66/search
It does seem like he was selling the works of other photographers too under the name of his own company, if this appropriation of a Huffman image is anything to by:
collections.theautry.org/mwebcgi/mweb.exe?request=record;id=M599663;type=102
Like Anderton, he took images at the NWMP forts; in fact, The Glenbow Museum credits various images taken in the Fort Walsh parade ground to Hook, not Anderton – this includes the image said to show Sitting Bull. Hook did takes images at Fort Calgary in early spring of 1879 and it seems he also took images at Fort Walsh during the period Anderton was there. (journals.lib.unb.ca/index.php/mcr/article/view/17637/22328 )
To underline this, Heather Caverhill in Masquerade and Modernity in the Cypress Hills: Performing Prairie Photography in the late 1870s, notes, “Historians of Canadian Prairie photography propose that two photographers created images of the Cypress Hills in the late 1870s. W.E. Hook, a photographer from Wisconsin, travelled through Montana and Western Canada in 1878 and 1879. During those years Hook visited a number of North West Mounted Police outposts, including Fort Walsh in the Cypress Hills. It is certainly possible that Hook was equipped to create tintypes, however his name is not mentioned in the archival data connected to the images discussed in this thesis. It is more likely that a photographer named Thomas George Naylor Anderton was involved in the creation of the five tintypes. Between the late 1870s and the mid-1890s Anderton operated photography studios, either on his own or with partners, in Fort Walsh, Fort Benton (Montana), Fort Macleod, Medicine Hat and Lethbridge.” era.library.ualberta.ca/items/eb967b32-0a53-4df4-9f30-0e399ea48dc3/view/5b59aa78-da3d-4bc0-ad5a-589aa544a24e/Caverhill_Heather_M_201409_MA..pdf
Here is a selection of images credited to Hook:
This is often credited to Anderton and its subjects are occasionally labelled Cree or even Lakota.
However, there is a print in a Hook mount:
The caption is interesting too: Cree and Assiniboine - and the group is supposed to contain Poundmaker and Little Child - though I think the bare-chested man in the centre bears some resemblance to Piapot...
Assiniboine or Cree - notice this version is a Haynes mount
Assiniboine camp, 1878-9. You'll see the text on the photo matches that on the council photo and also uses the term, "Britrish Possessions." There's an image in The Glenbow showing an Assiniboine group that I imagine was taken around the same time, but it features two women wearing nothing on the top half of their bodies, doubtless to make it more saleable; similarly, there's a photo of naked young Indian girl labelled Indian Forest Nymph, presumably for the same purpose. If you're interested in the treatnent of Indian women in Canada during this period, see this: core.ac.uk/download/pdf/17240388.pdf
Another, in the same style: The grave of Red Dog, 'Sioux,' near Eastend Post. Sgt. Rolph is at the left.
And another: Bull Back and some Blood Indians
He is said to have taken this image of Blood Indians at Fort Whoop-Up. The date of 1874 would be too early, of course, but this text may have been added later. The text underneath says: "Copy by the British and Colonial Photo Co., Lethbridge, Alberta," which was set up by Arthur Rafton-Canning, an Englishman by birth, who had emigrated to Canada in 1885 and worked for NWMP and the Edwards Bros. photographic studio in Vancouver. He then moved to Lethbridge and started the the British and Colonial Photographic Co. in 1907 and made images of the Blood people. See repository.royalholloway.ac.uk/file/468fbce6-63e6-8cb4-e7b9-2fda6910808e/1/Canada_in_the_Frame_FINAL_.pdf
[/a]Blood Indians at Fort Calgary, 1878. I've seen this image credted to Ernest Brown, another arrival from England, born in Middlesbrough or Newcastle-upon-Tyne, in 1877, depending on who you believe. However, he was operating much later, but he did collect images of the Canadian frontier and this may be where that particular attribution comes from:
"In 1933 Brown established the Pioneer Days Museum in Edmonton, which operated until 1939. The principal aim of the museum was to educate children and teachers about the pioneer heritage of Alberta. Brown wrote many articles to document the historic photographs that were used as exhibits. With the help of Gladys Reeves, he also developed the “Birth of the West” photographic history series, which was used as the basis for illustrated lectures given to schoolchildren.
During his lifetime Ernest Brown acquired a number of historical photographs, including C.W. Mathers’ collection of archival negatives. This collection included not only Mathers’ own negatives dating from 1895, but also many of those of the early Calgary photographers, Boorne and May."
hermis.alberta.ca/paa/Details.aspx?ObjectID=PR0043&dv=True&deptID=1
Baker's Store, Fort McLeod
Hudson's Bay Company Post, Northwest Territories, 1878/9
There are several views composed in the Fort Walsh Parade Ground, including the one that allegedly shows Sitting Bull. These views are also credited to Anderton
"Captain Jack" of the Blackfoot, Fort McLeod, 1878-9
Officers at Fort Walsh. Assiniboine tipi in background. Now if this was actually taken by Hook, then this one must have been too - or they're both by Anderton... The man with the beard is supposed to be Colonel McLeod
Mountie talks with either a Cree or Lakota or Assiniboine woman.
![]()
Wa-to-ga-la or Wild Elk, supposedly a nephew of Sitting Bull, but note the floral beadwork on his pouch and on his waistcoat. However, Wathogla does translate to wild or unbroken, so who knows...?
More later...
Thomas George Naylor Anderton, also known as George Anderton, was born in or near Leeds, Yorkshire in 1848. He probably emigrated to Canada in the 1870s. According to freepages.rootsweb.com/~anderton/genealogy/articles/tgnanderton.html, the first reference we know of is in 1876 when he worked as an agent for the West Canada Mining Company of Montreal. That same year, he joined the North West Mounted Police in 1876 in Ottawa and was later posted to Fort Walsh in the Cypress Hills, Saskatchewan.
It was while he was serving with the NWMP that he embarked on his career as a photographer, although it is not known whether or not any of the images he took during this period were part of any official Police business. It is said he was the first resident photographer in the North West Territories, working around Fort Walsh from 1876-1879, where he took images of the Indians who lived in the area, including Lakota who had moved across the border following the Battle of the Little Bighorn. It’s also claimed that he took the first photographic image of Sitting Bull, but more on that later.
Discharged from the Police in May 1880, he moved to Fort Benton, Montana where he set up a photographic tent studio with an American photographer, William Culver, with whom he is credited with creating the first photographic images of the Great Falls of the Missouri River. In late 1880, Culver moved to Fort Assiniboine and Anderton was back on his own, working in the Fort Walsh townsite by 1881. By May 1883, he had set up a studio in Medicine Hat and in Summer 1884 he opened another one at Fort Mcleod, working with his younger brother, Alfred H. Anderton. In April 1885 he handed over the management of the studio to his brother and opened a saloon and brewery but after the prohibition of alcohol he returned to photography in April 1889.
In the 1901 census of Alberta, there is a 53 year-old George Anderton, living in Standoff, on one of the Indian Reserves in Southern Alberta with his Blood wife. In 1888, he took an image entitled Blood children and women at Sun dance. Date: 1888; one of the women is labelled Mrs. T George. Anderton.
The Anderton story is complicated slightly because some of his images have been credited to a Litchfield-born Englishman, William Edward Hook (1833 – 1908) - and possibly vice versa.
Hook’s family emigrated to the United States in 1834, but had returned to England by 1851. In 1857, he married Eleanor Jane Dore (circa 1833-1914) with whom he had six children. He moved back to the USA in 1867 and opened a photography studio in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin. In February of 1875, he was joined by two of his sons, Theodore and William Edward, Jr.
“In 1877, Hook closed his photography studio in [Chippewa Falls] Wisconsin, and he and his surviving son, William, worked as traveling photographers from a home base in Missoula, Montana. Over the next four years, they travelled and captured images throughout Montana and Wyoming, including Yellowstone National Park, Alberta, Northwest Territory, and the Canadian Northwest Rockies. According to Hugh Dempsey, Hook had initially established himself at Fort Benton, then travelled north to Fort Whoop-Up and eventually made his way up to Fort Calgary.
journals.lib.unb.ca/index.php/MCR/article/download/17637/22328?inline=1
By 1881, he established a photography studio in Marquette, Michigan, from which he marketed his images of the American West.” archives.yale.edu/agents/people/59739
However, he headed out West again to Manitou Springs, Colorado in 1885 and having brought the remainder of his family over from England, he moved to Colorado Springs in 1890 and continued to take photographs there, such as this one:
Several of his photos can be found here: digitalcollections.ppld.org/digital/collection/p15981coll66/search
It does seem like he was selling the works of other photographers too under the name of his own company, if this appropriation of a Huffman image is anything to by:
collections.theautry.org/mwebcgi/mweb.exe?request=record;id=M599663;type=102
Like Anderton, he took images at the NWMP forts; in fact, The Glenbow Museum credits various images taken in the Fort Walsh parade ground to Hook, not Anderton – this includes the image said to show Sitting Bull. Hook did takes images at Fort Calgary in early spring of 1879 and it seems he also took images at Fort Walsh during the period Anderton was there. (journals.lib.unb.ca/index.php/mcr/article/view/17637/22328 )
To underline this, Heather Caverhill in Masquerade and Modernity in the Cypress Hills: Performing Prairie Photography in the late 1870s, notes, “Historians of Canadian Prairie photography propose that two photographers created images of the Cypress Hills in the late 1870s. W.E. Hook, a photographer from Wisconsin, travelled through Montana and Western Canada in 1878 and 1879. During those years Hook visited a number of North West Mounted Police outposts, including Fort Walsh in the Cypress Hills. It is certainly possible that Hook was equipped to create tintypes, however his name is not mentioned in the archival data connected to the images discussed in this thesis. It is more likely that a photographer named Thomas George Naylor Anderton was involved in the creation of the five tintypes. Between the late 1870s and the mid-1890s Anderton operated photography studios, either on his own or with partners, in Fort Walsh, Fort Benton (Montana), Fort Macleod, Medicine Hat and Lethbridge.” era.library.ualberta.ca/items/eb967b32-0a53-4df4-9f30-0e399ea48dc3/view/5b59aa78-da3d-4bc0-ad5a-589aa544a24e/Caverhill_Heather_M_201409_MA..pdf
Here is a selection of images credited to Hook:
This is often credited to Anderton and its subjects are occasionally labelled Cree or even Lakota.
However, there is a print in a Hook mount:
The caption is interesting too: Cree and Assiniboine - and the group is supposed to contain Poundmaker and Little Child - though I think the bare-chested man in the centre bears some resemblance to Piapot...
Assiniboine or Cree - notice this version is a Haynes mount
Assiniboine camp, 1878-9. You'll see the text on the photo matches that on the council photo and also uses the term, "Britrish Possessions." There's an image in The Glenbow showing an Assiniboine group that I imagine was taken around the same time, but it features two women wearing nothing on the top half of their bodies, doubtless to make it more saleable; similarly, there's a photo of naked young Indian girl labelled Indian Forest Nymph, presumably for the same purpose. If you're interested in the treatnent of Indian women in Canada during this period, see this: core.ac.uk/download/pdf/17240388.pdf
Another, in the same style: The grave of Red Dog, 'Sioux,' near Eastend Post. Sgt. Rolph is at the left.
And another: Bull Back and some Blood Indians
He is said to have taken this image of Blood Indians at Fort Whoop-Up. The date of 1874 would be too early, of course, but this text may have been added later. The text underneath says: "Copy by the British and Colonial Photo Co., Lethbridge, Alberta," which was set up by Arthur Rafton-Canning, an Englishman by birth, who had emigrated to Canada in 1885 and worked for NWMP and the Edwards Bros. photographic studio in Vancouver. He then moved to Lethbridge and started the the British and Colonial Photographic Co. in 1907 and made images of the Blood people. See repository.royalholloway.ac.uk/file/468fbce6-63e6-8cb4-e7b9-2fda6910808e/1/Canada_in_the_Frame_FINAL_.pdf
[/a]Blood Indians at Fort Calgary, 1878. I've seen this image credted to Ernest Brown, another arrival from England, born in Middlesbrough or Newcastle-upon-Tyne, in 1877, depending on who you believe. However, he was operating much later, but he did collect images of the Canadian frontier and this may be where that particular attribution comes from:
"In 1933 Brown established the Pioneer Days Museum in Edmonton, which operated until 1939. The principal aim of the museum was to educate children and teachers about the pioneer heritage of Alberta. Brown wrote many articles to document the historic photographs that were used as exhibits. With the help of Gladys Reeves, he also developed the “Birth of the West” photographic history series, which was used as the basis for illustrated lectures given to schoolchildren.
During his lifetime Ernest Brown acquired a number of historical photographs, including C.W. Mathers’ collection of archival negatives. This collection included not only Mathers’ own negatives dating from 1895, but also many of those of the early Calgary photographers, Boorne and May."
hermis.alberta.ca/paa/Details.aspx?ObjectID=PR0043&dv=True&deptID=1
Baker's Store, Fort McLeod
Hudson's Bay Company Post, Northwest Territories, 1878/9
There are several views composed in the Fort Walsh Parade Ground, including the one that allegedly shows Sitting Bull. These views are also credited to Anderton
"Captain Jack" of the Blackfoot, Fort McLeod, 1878-9
Officers at Fort Walsh. Assiniboine tipi in background. Now if this was actually taken by Hook, then this one must have been too - or they're both by Anderton... The man with the beard is supposed to be Colonel McLeod
Mountie talks with either a Cree or Lakota or Assiniboine woman.
More later...
