In Part 2 of this series, I concluded that despite scarce photographic evidence, American women who participated in the movement West in the early to mid-19th century really did wear sunbonnets on a regular basis. Surviving physical examples, newspaper references, and written recollections help to paint a picture of the frequency with which sunbonnets would have been in use. While researching the topic, I came across a rare and unusual photo taken in St. Louis, Missouri in 1848, showing a large group of women and girls wearing sunbonnets. After looking at thousands of daguerreotypes in online collections, this photograph stood out as unique and compelling.

The Photograph in Question:

Canton Tea Company and Union Fire Company Number 2 (1848, St. Louis, Missouri)

This photograph was captured via the daguerreotype process in 1848 by Thomas M. Easterly, one of two prominent commercial photographers operating in St. Louis at the time.

What makes this photo so special?

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Reason #6

We know this image was made as the new medium of photography was just starting to catch on.

Americans eagerly embraced photography.

In the 1840’s, Americans adopted the new art form of photography with immense zeal and enthusiasm, and daguerreotypes proliferated, spreading from the East Coast inland to the growing cities of the Midwest, such as St. Louis, Missouri. Though daguerreotypes were in demand and many eager entrepreneurs started photography businesses, the many step process of producing an image required significant skill and equipment. Therefore, the highest quality images were created by select number of practitioners with an eye for detail and most were likely (most surviving examples are unsigned) produced by established studios in urban centers.

The daguerreotype process was the first widely adopted form of photography, and the Canton Tea photo was produced prior to the peak and subsequent decline of daguerreotype use in the United States. The fact that the 1848 date and its maker, Thomas M. Easterly, remains attached to the Canton Tea Company photograph is rare in itself.

Further enhancing the value of this photograph is the fact that each daguerreotype made was one-of-a-kind. Making copies was difficult and uncommon. When conditions were ideal, the daguerreotype process was capable of capturing sharp images in extremely fine detail, but could produce only one single “direct-positive” copy at a time.  Unlike later negative-positive processes from which multiple copies of an image could be readily made, this makes each surviving daguerreotype image unique. The daguerreotype method of fixing an image to glass was overtaken in the 1850’s by easier, less expensive, and often lower-resolution, paper-based methods such as ambrotypes.

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Reason #5

The photo captures the rise of St. Louis, Missouri, a vital hub of the American interior, at a time of great social change.

Taken in 1848, this photo precedes the famous California ’49ers Gold Rush by one year. It captures a candid moment at an important, but tumultuous time and place in American history, when towns and cities in the “West” were becoming established and new urban centers boomed.

St. Louis became known as the “Gateway to the West.”

Located on the massive Mississippi River, St. Louis earned its nickname during the early part of the 19th century. By 1850, St. Louis had risen to the 8th largest city in the U.S., from its rank as the 24th largest only a decade before when it first merited mention (Statistical Atlas of the United States, 1898). The city flourished as a center of travel and commerce located on the largest inland waterway in the nation. In the second quarter of the century, the city experienced massive growth and remained ahead of San Francisco in population through the end of the 1800’s.

St. Louis Position – Rank of the Most Populous U.S. Cities at Each Census (1790 – 1890)

• 1840 – 24th largest city (First decade St. Louis was listed)
• 1850 – 8th largest city
• 1860 – 8th
• 1870 – 4th
• 1880 – 6th
• 1890 – 5th

Daguerrean photographer, Thomas M. Easterly, provided unique views of the developing American Midwest.

We have remarkable additional context for the Canton Tea photo.

Because the City of St. Louis today looks nothing like it did in the 1800’s, photos provide helpful insight for reconstructing historical context. On the Corner of Fourth and Olive Streets in St. Louis and catty-corner to the location of the Canton Tea Company, the exterior view of Easterly’s place of business was also preserved on “film.” Easterly’s studio, shown below, was almost certainly the vantage point from which the Canton Tea Company scene was photographed. This intersection of streets in downtown St. Louis is located approximately 1,200 feet from the future location of the famous St. Louis Gateway Arch monument. The majority of the 19th-century buildings in the center of town, which were lost to various fires and floods plaguing the city through the years, have been replaced by more modern structures.

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Reason #4

Studio-based portraiture dominated. Street scenes like this one were rare in this period.

Photographs showing outdoor locations constitute a very small percentage of surviving daguerreotypes. Prior to 1841, exteriors served as subject matter for the earliest photographs because initially, multi-hour exposure in bright sunlight was mandatory to produce an image (source). But, as the decade progressed and the technology was refined by its many practitioners, demand for producing portraiture far exceeded the desire to document inanimate objects. The paying customer could tolerate sitting still for the up-to-1-minute exposure time necessary to produce a clear photograph, and a steady clientele kept photographers in business. Congruently, landscapes and street scenes became uncommon subjects for photographs and did not contribute significantly to the profitability of an average daguerreotypist’s business (Library of Congress).

This photo of city life seems to indicate that Thomas Easterly appreciated the power of the photographic process, as he captured photos which suited his taste and passion for the art form rather than solely prioritizing profitability (Missouri Historical Society).

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Reason #3

This photo shows a large crowd of distinguishable human figures.

In the Canton Tea Company photograph, Easterly miraculously captured a large number of discernible people in a candid street scene, an unusual feat of photographic skill (plus probably a bit of luck).

Despite presumably being produced in full daylight and buzzing with activity, many of the small number of outdoor scenes of city streets which were captured in the first decades of photography are devoid of human figures or show only blurry blobs. Much the way long exposure times used by modern photographers in low-light conditions erase motor vehicles, leaving only streaks of headlights, human figures became ghostly shadows in early photos because people and horses did not stand still. This trend makes the clarity of the Canton Tea Company scene all the more unique.

Here you see few examples of ghostly blurs or nearly “empty” city streets in St. Louis, Missouri photographed via daguerreotype circa 1850.

Photos: Burritt’s Gallery, St. Louis waterfront 1851, “Empty” St. Louis street 1850, Public High School 1856

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Reason #2

A large group of women appears in this photograph.

Further setting this photograph apart is the inclusion of many female figures. Women appear in some outdoor photos of this time period among their male counterparts, but they are usually few in number and are far less common than groups of men.

These counterexamples show how people usually appeared in daguerreotype photos of outdoor settings.

The street scene with Tom Thumb shows a large crowd, but the figures are difficult to distinguish. Note, this is another view of the intersection of Fourth and Olive Streets, and the “Canton Tea Company” sign can be seen on the right side of this photograph, .

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#1 Reason

These women and girls are wearing sunbonnets!

As previously discussed, photographic evidence of sunbonnets in use in the mid-19th century seems to be exceedingly rare. In spite of this, I have spotted a few instances of women or girls captured in photographs wearing sunbonnets, but only a couple of women seem to show up in any single image, except for this one!

Demonstrating a quality and clarity which seldom characterizes early outdoor photographs, the charming spontaneity of the Canton Tea Company photo captures a large group of women, outdoors, prior to 1850, in a mid-western city, and they are nearly all clearly wearing sunbonnets. No less than twelve sunbonnets on the heads of women and girls in this photograph can reasonably be identified. A few additional blurry figures may have them as well, but they can’t be as reliably distinguished.

More Women Wearing Sun Bonnets

While also uncommon, these additional photos of women or girls show only a few in sunbonnets, but not in such a spectacular cluster as the Canton Tea Company balcony.

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Sunbonnets really did protect the heads of women who participated in the migration into the American West.

The group of women shown on the balcony of the Canton Tea Company, in the nation’s biggest boomtown of the era, are all wearing utilitarian sunbonnets. Appearing fashionable in a fancier bonnet may have often taken precedence, but here is proof that practicality could sometimes win out. If these women in the city wore calico sunbonnets, what about women who lived on isolated homesteads? It seems reasonable to infer that if it was acceptable to wear a sunbonnet in public while in an urban setting, they would be equally acceptable attire in newly established villages and throughout the vast rural regions being worked by homesteading families.

I am convinced that the enduring practicality and “diy” convenience of the sun-bonnet justified its presence on the heads of generations of the pioneering American women who wore them. And, they indeed wore them.

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Select References

Newhall, Beaumont. The Daguerreotype in America, 1975.

Gillespie, Sarah Kate. The Early American Daguerreotype. 2015

https://www.daguerreiansociety.org/

https://www.loc.gov/collections/daguerreotypes/articles-and-essays/the-daguerreotype-medium/

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Explore more historic fashion:

Mid-19th Century Sunbonnets (Part 1) – Snarky skincare advice for backwoods women

Mid-19th Century Sunbonnets (Part 2): Romanticized Myth or Pioneering Reality?

Project Log: 18th Century Handsewn Shortgown Jacket