Stephen H. Appleton Photograph Collection
Introduction
The Appleton Collection includes more than 2,000 glass photographic negatives, taken in Media, Pennsylvania and vicinity from 1888 to 1909. Media Historic Archives received the collection in 1988, but until 2018 most of these pictures had never been seen by the public. To begin viewing this collection, click here. For a fuller description of the Appleton photographs, please continue reading.
Background
Stephen H. Appleton (1854-1909) began taking photographs in Media, Pennsylvania in 1888, and continued this work until the year of his death. Photography was a sideline to his fulltime profession, as an editor with the Delaware County American, a weekly newspaper located at 212 W. State St. in Media. His family figured prominently in his early photographs: wife Deborah, sons Harry and Alfred—and more than 13 years after Harry’s birth, his daughter Sue, born in 1896. He also took pictures of his extended family and made copies of old photographs of various relatives. Two genealogical charts, showing the descendants of the photographer’s grandparents; and those of Deborah Appleton’s parents, indicate whose photographs are included in the collection.
Studio in Media
Appleton set up a photographic studio in his home at 341 W. State St. and shot hundreds of portraits in that setting—of babies and children, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters and extended families and even some of their pets. Other family and group portraits were more informal, shot on front porches, in backyards, and during family gatherings. He photographed local baseball, football and basketball teams, high school graduating classes, veterans’ groups, fraternal organizations, and workers (including bakers and waiters and even a priest) set against the backdrop of their workplaces. Names have been verified as much as possible, and alternate spellings have been provided, but some photographs (because of both the cryptic nature of the photographer’s index, and the illegibility at times of his florid script) remain enigmatic. Even where the subjects are unknown, the details revealed in close examination of these photographs provide a wealth of information about fashions in clothing, accessories, and hairstyles of the time.
Media Scenes
Appleton also took many photographs of buildings in Media and the surrounding communities—private dwellings, commercial buildings, churches and Quaker meetinghouses, seats of government and justice, the county jail, and the local fire company. Many of these have been identified with a current street address using a variety of search methods: vintage maps, old Media directories, online newspaper databases, Google Street View, and old-fashioned legwork (walking around town with pictures in hand). A document with links to these resources will eventually be added to the homepage of this website, to assist visitors in pursuing their own research. In posting even the unknown pictures, the hope is that someone out in the larger world will know what and where it was (or still is) and share the information with us.
Death, Crime, and Legal Cases
As was the custom of the day, Appleton took what are called “postmorten photographs” showing deceased people in their coffins, in beds, or other settings, often surrounded by floral tributes that must have been a mainstay of the local florist trade. A number of these are dead children and infants.
Appleton made a specialty of photography for legal cases, as he noted in an advertisement included in a 1903 booklet commemorating the unveiling of the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument on the Delaware County Court House lawn. Some of these photographs are clearly denoted by the words “case” or “accident” in the title. Others that are possibly legal work—such as photos of trolley tracks, rutted roads and gullies, and other odd scenes—have been so noted in the photograph descriptions.
As part of his legal work—and probably also for use in his newspaper—Appleton photographed crime scenes, crime reenactments, and various murderers who were incarcerated at the Delaware County Jail in Media.
Provenance
MHAC received the Appleton Collection in 1988, 100 years after the first photograph was taken. Frank Lees, a lifelong Media resident whose collection still forms the basis of the Media Historic Archives, arranged for the donation of the negatives and an accompanying index from Appleton’s granddaughter, Anna Catherine Appleton Tyler of Salisbury, Maryland. Tyler likely received the collection after the death of her aunt, Sue Appleton, in 1977, at which time the Appleton house at 341 W. State St. was probably cleared out and sold. The vast majority of Appleton’s roughly 2,000 photographs were captured on 4 x 5 inch, 5 x 7 inch, and 8 x 10 inch glass negatives. Lees had contact prints made of roughly 100 of the negatives, but most of the images remained unseen until the collection was unveiled on this website in 2018.
Creating the Online Collection
The work of cataloguing, cleaning, and scanning the negatives, undertaken by MHAC member Adam Levine, took about a year and a half. He first transcribed into a spreadsheet Appleton’s handwritten index, then cross referenced that information by examining the actual negatives, noting which were missing and adding information found on the negative envelopes where that supplemented the index entries.
Each plate was carefully cleaned with paper towels and water, and any remnants of the envelope stuck to the glass were removed when this could be done without damaging the emulsion side of the negative. When the Archives moved into the newly-completed Media-Upper Providence Free Library in 2016, Media Borough Council generously provided funds for new electronic equipment, including an Epson V850 scanner with a transparency lid. Negatives were scanned in grayscale at 600 or 800 dpi for 4x5 and 5x7 formats, and at 600 dpi for the 8x10 format. Original scans in the tiff format have been retained; edited images, cropped and adjusted in Adobe Photoshop, are presented in this online collection.
A final task was fleshing out the catalog with fuller descriptions, locations, and subject headings, all of which conform to Library of Congress specifications, with the goal of making this and future MHAC collections accessible through the Digital Public Library of America.
While all negatives that could be scanned were scanned, not all are presented in this online collection. Appleton took these photographs using a view camera on a tripod, and usually made multiple exposures of each scene or sitting. With outdoor scenes, this resulted in indentical images of the same scene, and in those cases the best exposure is presented here. With portrait sittings, however, each exposure reveals movement of the subjects--slight in most cases, but often dramatic in the caes of the many babies Appleton photographed--and so all exposures of these sittings are presented online.
Thanks
Adam Levine’s work in bringing the Appleton Collection to the public would not have been possible without the support of the other members of the Media Historic Archives Commission: Pat Lemly, Kathy LoRusso, Stephanie Gaboriault, and Walt Cressler. Our council liaison, Sayre Dixon, has consistently encouraged MHAC to have a more public presence, of which this online collection is the first big step. Thanks also to the staff and board of the Media-Upper Providence Free Library, who have supported the work in many ways, and recognize the value of having such an archive in a public library. Finally, this website would not have come together in such a comprehensive way without the expertise of Walt Rice Jr. of R&R Computer Solutions in Philadelphia.