17. Photographers

Who took that picture of the double Baptism in 1897?    Maybe it was a traveling photographer.   However, I believe the photographer could be narrowed down to one of two men who belonged to this group.    
 

Some unknown photographer went to great trouble to arrange this wonderful picture, manage to get dignified faces from everybody, and produce a perfect snapshot.    This is the only photograph of the Baptism event that I have come across.   The photo is barely 5 x 4 inches, making one think that the snapshot was not done by a professional but by an amateur photographer who processed the film and did not produce very many copies of the photo.    It was preserved intact in Aunt Anna's photo album (which was originally Ida's album).    

My Aunt Anna stated to me in 1977 that she thought her uncle Arnold Treuthardt took the picture, because he had a camera and a darkroom.   Arnold had knowledge of state-of-the-art photography of the late 1800's and early 1900's.  In 1897 he was 22 years old.  
   

Nineteen years after my 1977 interview with Aunt Anna, on October 11, 1996, I visited with the grandson of Arnold Treuthardt.    John Treuthardt, who lived in Richardson, Texas, recalled seeing a camera which Arnold had built himself.   Arnold's granddaughter, Barbara Kiser, also informed me that he took pictures and had a camera and a darkroom.   Aunt Anna was correct in her memory about this.    My father also mentioned that Arnold was a photographer.  

There is another contender for the role of photographer, in the man Henry Bouffard.   A few years after the Baptism photograph was taken,  Arnold married Henry's sister Louise Bouffard, on February 14, 1902.   

This information came to me in August of 1997, when Betty Sue Foy wrote to me concerning her grandfather, Henry.    She reports, 

"My grandfather, Henry Bouffard, was an amateur photographer and it was my understanding that he had a dark room set up in his milk house where he did his own developing."     According to Foy's document, "Descendants of Jacob Ischi(y)," Henry Bouffard was born in 1879.    At the time of this photograph, in 1897, Henry would have been 18 years old, and not a member of the family through marriage yet.    The Treuthardt, Ischy and Bouffard families were all well acquainted, though, and it is possible that an 18-year-old might have taken the picture. 

There is no doubt in my mind that the (eventual) brothers-in-law Arnold and Henry encouraged each other in photography.     I only wish we had access to more of their pictures!