1. FBJ, ed. “The Foremost Women Photographers in America,” The Ladies’ Home Journal 18, no. 8 (July 1901): 13.
2. The thirty-six square mile town, settled by the English in 1669, had a population of 2421 in 1850.
3. In 1874, the Allens owned twenty-eight acres of mowing and tillage fields, twenty-five acres of pasture, and a ten-acre wood lot. The total value of this property, which also included an eighteenth-century house, a barn and shed, and a new barn, was $4,170. Valuation List for the Town of Deerfield, May 1, 1874 (Springfield, MA: Weaver, Shipman & Company, 1874), p. 3.
4. Josiah Allen (1814-1895) was the son of Eliel and Electa (Allis) Allen and Mary Stebbins Allen (1819-1901) was the daughter of Dennis and Lois (Hawks) Stebbins. Their children were: Frances Stebbins (1854-1941), Mary Electa (1858-1941), Edmund Eliel (1855-1939), and Caleb (1861-1927).
5. See Catalogue of the State Normal School, at Westfield, Mass., For the Year ending June 29, 1876 (Westfield, MA: Clark & Story, 1876), p. 15, WSC; “State Aid. Summer Term of 1876,” Students, 1876-1901, Book of Reports, 1876-1881, p. 274, WSC. Frances received $12.12; “Winter Term of 1875-1876. State Aid,” Westfield State Normal School, January 5, 1867, p. 325, WSC. Fanny Allen was one of 37 pupils that $400.00 in State Aid was divided among.
6. Tom Beck, An American Vision: John G. Bullock and the Photo-Secession (New York, NY: Aperature in association with University of Maryland Baltimore County, Albin O. Kuhn Library & Gallery, 1989), pp. 7-8, cites, John F. Weir, “Group 27. Plastic and Graphic Art,” International Exhibition, 1876. Reports and Awards 7, ed. Francis A. Walker (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1880), pp. 608, 628-29, 683, 685.
7. “Deerfield,” Gazette and Courier (Greenfield), 27 October 1888: 4. My thanks to Amelia F. Miller for pointing out this newspaper reference.
8. Elbridge Kingsley of nearby Hatfield, MA, a close friend of the Miller family and acquainted with the Allens, was a successful wood-engraver whose work was made obsolete by the halftone. Kingsley also dabbled with the camera and lectured and published articles concerning photography. See Elbridge Kingsley, “Art in Photography,” Anthony’s Photographic Bulletin 18, no. 3 (12 February 1887): 86-88; no. 4 (26 February 1887): 113-15; no. 5 (12 March 1887): 146-49.
9. Horace E. Miller, Sketches of Conway (Conway, MA: H. E. Miller, 1890).
10. Chas F. Warner, ed., Picturesque Franklin (Northampton, MA: Wade, Warner & Company, 1891).
11. MEA, “Old Deerfield,” The New England Magazine 7, no. 1 (September 1892): 11-12, 33.
12. “Camera Studies of Child Life,” The Illustrated Buffalo Express, 17 December 1893: 13.
13. Marguerite Tracy, “Shadows of the Artist’s Ideal,” The Quarterly Illustrator 2, no. 6 (1894): 209. Gertrude Käsebier’s prize-winning photograph, “Are They the Real That Blossoms and Passes,” is illustrated along with fifteen other photographs of women draped in Grecian dress.
14. “Notes on the Washington Salon,” The American Amateur Photographer 8, no. 7 (July 1896): 306.
15. “Washington Art Photographic Salon,” The American Amateur Photographer 8, no. 6 (June 1896): 237.
16. “Notes on the Washington Salon,” 308. “A Steep Path” was reproduced in The American Amateur Photographer 8, no. 8 (August 1896): 337. As with “A Steep Path,” subsequently titled and exhibited as “A Difficult Step,” the Allen sisters were not necessarily consistent with titles. At times, an image was given more than one title. In other instances, a title is used for more than one image.
17. “A National Collection,” The American Amateur Photographer 8, no. 7 (July 1896): 278-82.
18. FBJ also used her connections with the Washington elite to promote the Deerfield Society of Blue and White Needlework. FBJ borrowed embroidery patterns of the Deerfield Society from MEA, an active member. FBJ also had a friendly relationship with Phoebe Apperson Hearst, mother of newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst. In a letter from MEA to FBJ, 29 March [1897], FBJC-LC, she mentions that Margaret Whiting was embroidering a bag pocket for Mrs. Hearst. The Chicago Sunday Times, 4 December 1898, reported that the women of the Deerfield Society of Blue and White Needlework were embroidering a bedspread for Mrs. Hearst’s Washington home.
19. MEA to FBJ, 30 July 1898, reel 20, FBJC-LC. When this letter was microfilmed, the section containing this was filmed separately from the first part. A copyright search covering the period 1870 through 1954 revealed that FSA and MEA never registered to copyright their photographs. Stephen G. Soderberg, Copyright Office, LC, letter to David R. Proper, Librarian, The Memorial Libraries, Deerfield, MA, 10 February 1982.
20. Ibid.
21. My thanks to Gill Thompson, Librarian, The Royal Photographic Society, for sending me a copy of the 1897 catalogue.
22. “The 1898 American Institute Exhibition of Photographs,” The American Amateur Photographer 10, no. 10 (October 1898): 460.
23. MEA letter to FBJ, 4 June 1900, reel 5, FBJC-LC.
24. Etienne Wallon, “L’Exposition des Artistes Américaines au Photo-Club,” Photo-Gazette 2, (25 February 1901): 63. My thanks to Bronwyn Griffith, Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, for bringing this review to my attention.
25. Toby Quitslund, “Her Feminine Colleagues: Photographs and Letters Collected by Frances Benjamin Johnston in 1900,” in Women Artists in Washington Collections, ed. Josephine Withers, (College Park, MD: The Gallery, 1979), pp. 97-109, 112. For a comprehensive review of this important exhibition and the Frances Benjamin Johnston collection at the Library of Congress, see Bronwyn A. E. Griffith, ed., Ambassadors of Progress: American Women Photographers in Paris, 1900-1901 (Giverny, France: Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, 2001).
26. Memorial Hall Museum was recently given a framed photograph of “Woman in Sunbonnet” with a Philadelphia Photographic Salon, 1899 label. The 1899 catalogue does not include any Allen sisters’ photographs. In an August 16, 2001 e-mail to the author, Cheryl Leibold, Archivist, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, explained that although there is a slight chance that the photograph was added to the exhibition after the catalogue went to press, it is more likely that the photograph was rejected by the jury and the label, which as part of the entry form was filled out and attached to the work when it was submitted, was simply not removed from the back.
27. Charles L. Mitchell, M.D., “The Third Philadelphia Salon,” The American Amateur Photographer 12, no. 12 (December 1900): 565.
28. MEA letter to FBJ, n.d. [Summer, 1901], reel 6, FBJC- LC. The Philadelphia Inquirer, 13 October 1901, Section 2: 4 notes “The Photographic Society is showing for its monthly wall display this season a collection of most attractive prints by Mary and Frances Allen.”
29. FBJ, ed. “The Foremost Women Photographers in America,” The Ladies’ Home Journal 18, no. 8 (July 1901): 13. The articles on the other women appeared in May, June, August, October, and November 1901, and January 1902.
30. MEA letter to FBJ, n.d. [Summer 1901], reel 6, FBJC-LC.
31. Juan C. Abel, “Women Photographers and Their Work,” The Delineator 58, no. 5 (November 1901): 747-51.
32. Country Life in America 9, no. 2 (December 1905): 164-65.
33. MEA diary, 8 December 1912, PC.
34. E. M., “Child Portraiture,” Good Housekeeping 35, no. 6 (December 1902): 395.
35. Dorothy Andrews Parmeter, interview with author, Hatfield, MA, 8 December 1997.
36. Mary A. Ball, Deerfield, MA, letter to Ellie Reichlin, Librarian, SPNEA, 13 November 1979, SPNEA Library.
