Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Photographer of the Early West, the Story of Arundel Hull
    Photographer of the Early West, the Story of Arundel Hull
    Photographer of the Early West, the Story of Arundel Hull
    Ebook91 pages1 hour

    Photographer of the Early West, the Story of Arundel Hull

    By Eugene Miller

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    As a young boy Arundel C. Hull became fascinated with newly developed wet-plate photography. He apprenticed in a St. Paul Minnesota gallery then at age 17 opened his own studio in St Cloud. After three years the lure of greater adventure led him to Omaha where the building of the Union Pacific Railroad was the center of excitement. He made many pictures of the town and businesses and jointed E. L. Eaton working at Omaha' first portrait studio.
    In the spring of 1867 Hull gathered his photographic equipment and supplies then boarded west-bound trains on the newly established railroad. Stopping at towns along the way, he was often the first photographer to document the emerging towns such as early Grand Island, Plum Creek (Lexington), North Platte, and Ogallala.
    He traveled into Wyoming, and the Colorado Gold country making photographs of Blackhawk, Central City and Georgetown then back into Wyoming, to Cheyenne, Laramie, and Green River, before running out of customers.
    Early in 1869, after returning to Omaha, Hull was back at Omaha's photographic studio now owned by newly arrived Jackson brothers. In mid-year Hull and Jackson responded to the Union Pacific's promise to buy photographs from out along their line. The pair traveled west, stopped briefly in Cheyenne, then into the Utah canyons and out to Promontory, arriving shortly after the historic Golden Spike event.
    Soon after returning to Omaha Hull moved on to Fremont where he established his own gallery then married, and led the town with his innovations and civic involvement. Hull contributed generously toward the town's development assisting in the construction of a large creamery, school, a telephone system, and electrification.
    He was active in the volunteer fire department, Masonic Lodge 859, Signet Chapter 8 of Royal Arch Masons, and Knights Templar.
    For many years Hull stored the glass plate negatives of his work including shots of Chief Sitting Bull's first photo. Unfortunately, a tenant of Hull's gallery pitched the collection wiping out much of Hull's prior work of note.
    The Hull's photography is striking, indicative of Hull's eye for beautiful composition, And his ability, during his travels, to carry out the complicated processes using a portable black box as a darkroom.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherEugene Miller
    Release dateAug 28, 2012
    ISBN9780988235908
    Photographer of the Early West, the Story of Arundel Hull
    Author

    Eugene Miller

    Eugene Arundel Miller is the youngest grandson of Arundel C. Hull, who was one of the earliest photographers to travel along the Union Pacific Railroad during its construction in the late 1860s. Intrigued by stories of Hull’s travels across the Nebraska plains and into the mountains of Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah, Miller researched Hull’s early life and organized his photos to write his biography and Miller’s major book “Rail-road 1869, Along the Historic Union Pacific”. The book traces construction of the Union Pacific Railroad from Omaha to Promontory during 1867 to 1869 and incorporates many photographs by Hull and other contemporary photo-graphers. The original book, republished as a printed State-by-State series, and as an abridged e-book series, is offered for the continued enjoyment of travelers, railroad buffs, students, and historians.

    Read more from Eugene Miller

    Related to Photographer of the Early West, the Story of Arundel Hull

    Related ebooks

    Artists and Musicians For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Exhibitions

      Nov 3, 2017

      Exhibitions
      17 min read

    • Article

      The Flow of Pictures

      Sep 5, 2023

      The Flow of Pictures
      7 min read

    • Article

      A History of the Evidence

      May 3, 2017

      A History of the Evidence
      8 min read

    • Article

      The Quiet Season

      Nov 12, 2022

      The Quiet Season
      7 min read

    • Article

      Philippe Halsman

      Jul 2, 2019

      Philippe Halsman
      2 min read

    • Article

      Joel Meyerowitz

      May 4, 2018

      Joel Meyerowitz
      6 min read

    • Article

      Bill Brandt

      Oct 30, 2018

      In 1927, a young man by the name of Bill Brandt arrived in Vienna to see a lung specialist. He was 23 and had spent the previous six years in a Swiss hospital recovering from tuberculosis. The city was much to his liking, and Brandt decided to stay,

      2 min read

    • Article

      Pictorialismo

      Feb 5, 2022

      Pictorialismo
      1 min read

    • Article

      Kristina Makeeva

      Jul 5, 2021

      Kristina Makeeva
      4 min read

    • Article

      The Camera's Eye

      Dec 5, 2021

      The Camera's Eye
      13 min read

    • Article

      Outsmarting The Smartphone

      May 24, 2021

      I saw an observation recently that stated that the difference between a smartphone and a camera was involvement… to which I would add the words “and commitment”. Then there’s the online promotional campaign currently being run by Ted’s Cameras under

      2 min read

    • Article

      Five Hundred Glass Negatives

      Sep 7, 2017

      Five Hundred Glass Negatives
      6 min read

    • Article

      Process Infrared Images

      Dec 16, 2019

      Process Infrared Images
      1 min read

    • Article

      Monochrome

      Sep 11, 2021

      Monochrome
      8 min read

    • Article

      Hill’s country

      Feb 22, 2022

      Hill’s country
      5 min read

    • Article

      Photographer in Motion

      Feb 21, 2023

      Photographer in Motion
      4 min read

    • Article

      KÄSEBIER & CAMERON

      Jan 22, 2019

      Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show arrived in New York City for a series of performances in 1898, and Gertrude Käsebier was watching as actors of the troupe — including Sioux Indians from the Great Plains — paraded past her Fifth Avenue studio. The specta

      7 min read

    • Article

      State Of The State 200

      Jul 27, 2021

      State Of The State 200
      21 min read

    • Article

      On Vacation with BC History

      Jun 4, 2019

      Books on British Columbia’s history are summer sidekicks for many of us. Packed into suitcases and taken on vacation, tucked into a bag and carted off to the beach, or read at home without switching on a lamp in the sunny evening hours. I usually sta

      10 min read

    • Article

      Challenge Your BC Bookshelf

      Jun 4, 2020

      Challenge Your BC Bookshelf
      10 min read

    • Article

      Wonders Of The West

      May 1, 2022

      People had a hard time believing everything they were hearing from the first explorers of the American West in the mid-1800s. Fantastic descriptions of shooting geysers, incredible waterfalls, ancient cliff dwellings, and dramatic mountain ridges wer

      3 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Photographer of the Early West, the Story of Arundel Hull

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Photographer of the Early West, the Story of Arundel Hull - Eugene Miller

      Photographer of the Early West

      The Story of Arundel Hull - Abridged

      with

      Arundel C. Hull

      Ghost Photographer for William H. Jackson

      Abridged

      Smashwords Edition

      E-book ISBN 978-0-9882359-0-8

      © 2012 by Eugene A. Miller

      Unabridged print version ISBN 978-0-9728511-0-7

      Antelope Press 410 Monte Vista Avenue

      Mill Valley, California 94941-5081

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written permission from the author, except for brief quotations for the purpose of review.

      Table of Contents

      To jump, Hold Ctrl then left click on Chapter

      Chapter 1 Introduction

      Chapter 2 The St. Paul Apprenticeship

      Chapter 3 St. Cloud The First Gallery

      Chapter 4 Omaha in 1866

      Chapter 5 Trips West, 1867 and 1868

      Chapter 6 Into Colorado

      Chapter 7 Omaha Again, 1869

      Chapter 8 Traveling with Jackson, 1869

      Chapter 9 The Fremont Gallery

      Chapter 10 Married Life

      Chapter 11 A City Elder

      Appendix Contents

      Ghost Photographer for William H. Jackson

      Chapter A1 Introduction

      Chapter A2 William Jackson in Omaha

      Chapter A3 Hull Meets Jackson

      Chapter A4 Jackson's 1869 Trip with Hull

      Chapter A5 The Canyons are Next

      Chapter A6 Hull’s Trip Back to Omaha

      Chapter A7 The Ghost Photographer

      Chapter A8 A Puzzling Diary Addition

      Chapter A9 Final Word

      Chapter 1 Introduction

      Born in 1846, Arundel C. Hull reached adulthood during the stirring years following the Civil War, as the surge of immigrants, gold seekers, and railroad opportunists moved across the plains and into the West.

      Wars deprived Hull of his father and two older brothers. But his early adulthood coincided with the period in our country’s history that was most filled with adventure and packed with excitement. His youth and confidence suited those exciting years. He was a pioneer photographer, and he succumbed to an urge to see the West. Embracing the new technology of wet-plate photography, he captured some of the very first photographic images along the Union Pacific Railroad and in the gold fields of Colorado. He took hundreds of pictures through Nebraska, Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah, beginning in the summer of 1867, again in 1868, and again in 1869 with William H. Jackson. By January 1870, when he established a permanent studio at Fremont, Nebraska, he already had experience well beyond his twenty-three years.

      Earlier, during his travels in the West, Hull did not use expensive printed mounting cards for his prints; thus his name did not appear on the back of the views and portraits he sold. The trail of those images has been lost. The few prints that he saved were among the hundreds of glass-plate negatives and prints stored at his gallery in Fremont. Unfortunately, they were indifferently destroyed. But sixty-nine prints of scenes in Colorado, Nebraska, Wyoming, and Utah, taken in 1867 and 1868, were preserved in a family album.

      Family records also included a sketchbook with charcoal sketches and ten photographs taken in 1869, during the time Hull accompanied William H. Jackson on his first trip west. The Hull family album, sketchbook, and photographs have been released to the public as part of the record of that exciting period in our history; they can be found in the permanent archives of the Denver Public Library Western History and Genealogy Department.

      Hull had previously received only scant recognition among the early photographers of the West. Toward the end of the twentieth century, however, some of his dramatic photographs were displayed by Robert Darwin in his book The History of the Union Pacific Railroad in Cheyenne and acknowledged by Eric Paddock in his writings about William Jackson.

      With the use of some of Hull’s historic images in the 2003 documentary Transcontinental Railroad, for the PBS television series American Experience, and the release of his entire photographic album, his place among the photographic pioneers of the West has emerged.

      This biography describes Hull’s photographic contribution to Western history and recounts his later life as he settled in Fremont, Nebraska, and continued to display his talents as a portrait photographer.

      Chapter 2 The St. Paul Apprenticeship

      At his childhood home in Fort Wayne Indiana Hull became interested in the relatively new, complicated science and art of photography. He was mechanically inclined and had inherited a definite artistic talent. Photography offered an outlet for his talent and a practical way to earn a living.

      In 1862, when he was 16, Hull traveled to St. Paul, Minnesota, to apprentice in the photographic gallery of Joel Emmons Whitney. St. Paul was a bustling city of more than ten thousand at the head of navigation just above a great bend in the Mississippi River. The city was the center of trade at the edge of the Canadian and U.S. frontiers, and Hull probably sensed that it offered great adventure and opportunity.

      Arundel C. Hull, age 17.

      Hull spent more than a year at the gallery, learning photographic portraiture. Photography had advanced technically and promised to be an absorbing and challenging profession. In the mid-1800s, the daguerreotype process had been replaced by an early collodion process called ambrotype. A freshly prepared, thick, viscous liquid was poured across a glass plate to sensitize it. After the coated plate had been exposed, a single image could be made from it. The process required a considerable amount of equipment, a fixed studio location, and a darkroom to work in.

      A New Technology

      Around 1860, the

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1