Environmental History: Researching the Environment:
Seneca Ray Stoddard collection
The print version of the finding aid was compiled by Karen Cannell, New York State Archives.
© 2005
Overview
Arrangement
Biographical Note
Content Description
Administrative Information
Use of the Collection
Related Information
Access Terms
Overview of the Collection
| Repository: | Adirondack Museum Library |
| Sponsor: | Funding for encoding this finding aid was provided through a grant awarded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. |
| Collection Number: | MS 75-2 |
| Creator: | Stoddard, Seneca Ray, 1843-1917 |
| Title: | Seneca Ray Stoddard collection |
| Dates: | 1848-1916 |
| Physical Description: | 2 cu. ft. of textual records; photographs; drawings; maps |
| Summary: | Seneca Ray Stoddard was an American landscape photographer, publisher, and conservationist active in the Adirondack Region of New York State. This collection consists of correspondence, manuscripts, maps, and photographs created by Stoddard and accumulated by Maitland DeSormo. Tcorrespondence mainly pertains to advertising in Stoddard's guidebooks. There are lecture clippings, notices, programs, and a diary of a trip Stoddard took to the Adirondacks (1873). Also included are U.S. Patent Office certificatand specifications for improvement on photographic apparatus and for improvement on electrical trolleys, and receiptsphotographs and maps deposited with the Library of Congress. There are a number of manuscripts in the collection including "Jan the Golden," "The Hudson River from the Mountains to the Sea," and "The Adirondacks," which includes mounted photographs. Also included are Stoddard wood engravings, a pencil sketcfor "The Adirondack Illustrated," and map proofs for guidebooks including maps of Lake Placid, Upper and Lower Saranac Lake, and Lake Champlain from Westport to Burlington. There also are maps of the Adirondack Mountains, a Verplank Colvin reconnaissance map of Tallow or Blue Mountain Lake, and a map of Herkimer, Hamiltonand Montgomery Counties. |
Arrangement
There is no apparent arrangement scheme for the material.
Overview
This collection consists of correspondence, sketches, manuscripts, and photographs created by Stoddard and accumulated by Maitland DeSormo. The correspondence mainly concerns advertising in Stoddard's guidebook and notes and correspondence of Maitland DeSormo regarding Stoddard. Also included are Stoddard's calling cards; account books containing record of copyrights; guidebooks; hotel information forms; lecture clippings, notices and programs; a diary of a trip Stoddard took to the Adirondacks (1873); and Adirondack Mountain Reserve memoranda. There are also U.S. Patent Office certificates and specifications for improvement on photographic apparatus and for improvement on electrical trolleys; receipts for photographs and maps deposited with the Library o Congress; and copies of Arthur Winslow's Stadia Surveying and John C. Trautwin's The Civil Engineers Pocketbook. Manuscripts of Stoddard's which include Jan the Golden (4 copies); Marsa Phil (2 copies); The Hudson River from the Mountains to the Sea; The Cruise of the Friesland, 1895; and The Adirondacks (contai mounted photos). Also included are Stoddard wood engravings; map sketches; a pencil sketch for The Adirondack Illustrated; map proofs for guidebooks including maps of Lake Placid, Upper and Lower SaranacLake, and Lake Champlain from Westport to Burlington (box 6, folders 1a-17); and maps of Keene Valley; AdirondacMountains; a Verplank Colvin reconnaissance map of Tallow or Blue Mountain Lake (published by Weed, Parson anCo.); Herkimer, Hamilton and Montgomery Counties; and Whiteface - Saranac River.
Biographical Sketch
Seneca Ray Stoddard, landscape photographer and conservationist, was born in Wilton (Saratoga County), N.Y. in 1843. He was the son of Charles Stoddard, a part-time farmer who also did craft work and lumbering, and Julia Ray Stoddard. Stoddard's childhood home (the Wilton hamlet of Dimick's Corners) was located near Mount McGregor, the highest peak of the Adirondacks' Palmer Range. Following the deaths of Julia Stoddard and an infant daughter in 1854, Charles Stodda married Laura Cook and two years later moved his family north. By the close of the decade they were living in Burke (Franklin County), N.Y. in Hawk's Hollow, a hamlet on the northern edge of the Adirondacks. Stoddard attended common school in Burke through the age of seventeen. He probably began some training as a carriage painter in Burke as well. In 1861, his family moved to the Albany-T area. The following year, Stoddard began work as a journeyman carriage painter for the Gilbert Car Company on Green Island in Watervliet (Albany County), N.Y. Gilbert, a manufacturer of railway cars, employed "ornamental painters" to decorate its coaches with painted panels of landscapes and other scenes. In 1864, Stoddard left the Albany-Troy area to establish his own painting business the Adirondack lumber-processing community of Glens Falls (Warren County), N.Y. By 1867, Stoddar had ceased advertising as a "Carriage, House, Sign, Banner, and Ornamental" painter, and October of that year, a local newspaper praised stereographs of Glens Falls scenes executed by "Mr. Stoddard, Photographer."
In May 1868, Stoddard married Helen Augusta Potter, the daughter of a wealthy Glens Falls insurance agent and merchant. The couple had two sons. By the summer of 1868, Stoddard was making stereo images of nearby Lake George. He used the wet-plate technology of the day, which required that a photographer of outdoor scenes transport not only a camera weighing fifty pounds or more but also an array of chemicals to "fix" the glass plate negatives after exposure. In 1870 Stoddard lived on Elm Street in Glens Falls, the site of his home and studio for the remainder of his career, and claimed the profession of "landscape painter." Over the next few years he painte and photographed Lake George views. His photographs of these years resemble the landscapes paint by the noted Hudson River School artist John Kensett. In 1873, Stoddard photographed and painted in the Adirondacks and published the first of a long-running series of guidebooks to the region, The Adirondacks Illustrated, in which he expressed Emersonian beliefs about the goodness, beauty, and healing properties of unspoiled wilderness. By 1875, he was selling his images tourists in area hotels while his painting career was ending.
During the 1870s, Stoddard also wrote for the Glens Falls and Troy newspapers (mainly accounts of Adirondack trips and humorous sketches) and took an active role in the New York State Temperanc movement, becoming "Grand Worthy Patriarch" of the state organization's "Easte Division" in 1875. Raised a Methodist, Stoddard hinted at spiritualist beliefs in his earliest writings Toward the close of his life, he turned away from traditional religious forms, preferring to worship only "Nature's Temple." From his early writings through the later ones, he also revealed an opposition toward urban living that carried over into antipathies toward both large industrial concerns a immigrant groups. Through the 1870s and into the mid-1880s, Stoddard made hundreds of landscape images on Lake George and in the Adirondacks, also working to some extent in New Hampshire's White Mountains, on the Maine seacoast, in the lower Hudson Valley, and along the Saint Lawrence River. Though Stoddard used the more rapid dry-plate photographic method from the early 1880s, his body of work from the fifteen-year period forms a stylistic whole of serene, light-filled, predominantly horizontal views, with people and buildings treated as sharply defined, often dramatically highlighted forms that are frequently appreciated as abstract, geometric shapes. His views of the Adirondacks in particular preserve the region's social and architectural history at a time when wealthy tourists an elaborate "camps" and hotels were first making their appearance in a region of bark huts, hermits, Native American hunters, logging camps, and hardscrabble farms.
In 1878, Stoddard served as a photographer on the New York State Survey of the Adirondacks, where he gained sufficient knowledge to publish his own popular "Map of the Adirondacks" two years later. In 1881, he published another successful map of Lake George. His interest in technology led him to invent in 1882 a camera attachment for use in dry-plate photography and to perfect the "magnesium flash" for taking night photographs. In 1890, he successfully tested this flash in New York City, capturing striking night views of the Statue of Liberty and the Washington Square Arch. From the mid-1880s through the 1890s, Stoddard made a series of photographic trips to Europe, the Near East, the American West and South, and Alaska, achieving financial success by presenting "illustrated" lectures of his travels to audiences throughout the northeastern Unite States. During this era, he lectured on the Adirondacks as well, showing lantern slides of the early images. His photographs of the Adirondack region fixed the image of the Adirondacks as an earthly paradise in the public mind. In 1891, he helped win a political victory with these images; he delivered h illustrated lecture on the Adirondacks to the sitting New York State Legislature and swayed the body to pass the Adirondack Park Bill.
After his wife's death in 1906, Stoddard launched a Glens Falls-based magazine, "Stoddard's Northern Monthly" (later "Stoddard's Adirondack Monthly") with articles and short stories advocating wilderness conservation. In 1908, he married Emily Doty, the family's longtime housekeeper; they had no children. After the magazine failed (1908), Stoddard completed a hydrographic chart of Lake George and his Auto-Road Map of the Adirondacks and the Champlain and Hudson Valleys. Stoddard died in Glens Falls in 1917 [Source: American National Biography (2004)].
Administrative Information
Custodial History
The collection was purchased from Maitland DeSormo.
Processing Information
This collection's description was enhanced as a part of the New York State Archives Environmental HistoryVirtual Research Collection Project, 2004. The National Endowment for the Humanities provided funding for this project.
Use of Collection
Access Restrictions
There are no restrictions regarding access to or use of the material.
Available Alternate Formats
Some of the maps in Map Folder 2 are photocopies.
Related Information
Related Material
Stoddard [Collection of photographs mostly of the Adirondacks: Part of the Maitland C. DeSormo collection] (PRI4963) and Adirondack Collection, 1843-1985 (SC17501), New York State Library, Albany, N.Y.; Stoddardphotographs transferred to the Adirondack Museum Historical Photograph Collection and the William West Durant papers (MS 63-258) at the Adirondack Museum Library, Blue Mountain Lake, N.Y.; the Stoddard collection at the Chapman Museum, Glens Falls, N.Y.
Other Finding Aids
An inventory is available at the repository.
Access Terms
Corporate NamesSubjects
Photographers
Geographic Names
Adirondack Mountains (N.Y.) - Guidebooks
Genre/Form
Photographs
Engraving
Sketches
Maps
Manuscripts
Function
Personal Names
DeSormo, Maitland
Container List
| Dates | Contents | Box | Folder |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1873-1892 | Correspondence mainly re: advertising in Stoddard's guidebo | 1 | 1 |
| 1893-1916 | Correspondence; Hotel information forms completed for guidebookGuidebooks pages | 1 | 2 |
| Undated | Lectures (clippings, notices, programs) | 1 | 3 |
| 1848-1853 | Brochures and clippings (some are copies); Letter: John Brown to Simon Perkins (copy); Letter: John Brown to unknown party (copy); Portion of a letter; Brochures and clippings (7 items); Adirondack Mountain Reserve memoranda | 1 | 4 |
| 1882-1905 | U.S. Patent Office certificate and specifications for improvement on photographic apparatus and electrical trolleys; and U.S. Library of Congress receipts for photographs and maps deposited according to copyright laws | 1 | 5 |
| Undated | Notes and correspondence of Maitland DeSormo re: Stoddard | 1 | 6 |
| 1902 | Manuscript "Jan the Golden" (several versions) with editimarks | 2 | 1 |
| Undated | Manuscript "Marsa Phil" typescript with editing marks | 3 | 1 |
| Undated | Manuscript "Marsa Phil" and "Lex Talionis" typescript with editing marks | 3 | 2 |
| 1892 | Manuscript "The Hudson River from the Mountains to the Sea" typescript with editing marks | 3 | 3 |
| 1892 | Manuscript "The Hudson River from the Mountains to the Sea" typescript with editing marks. Includes hand colored mounted photographs | 3 | 4 |
| Undated | Manuscript "The Midnight Sun" typescript with editing marks. Includes mounted photographs | 3 | 5 |
| 1901 | Manuscript "The Midnight Sun: Being the story of the cruise ofthe Ohio" typescript with editing marks | 3 | 6 |
| 1890 | Manuscript "The Story of Atlantis: Her Crews and Cruise"typescript with editing marks and sketches | 4 | 1 |
| 1896 | Manuscript "The Cruise of the Friesland, 1895" typescripwith editing marks | 4 | 2 |
| 1874-1884 | Stoddard wood engravings and pencil sketch for "The Adirondack Illustrated"; proof copy of "The Adirondack's"; letter re: stage route for "The Adirondack Illustrated"; map of Keene Valley; map proofs for guide books | 5 | 1 |
| Undated | Big Burnt Lake - Crooked Lake Map | 5 | 1a |
| Undated | Adirondack Wilderness (4 versions) | 5 | 2-5 |
| Undated | Lake Placid and Mirror Lake | 5 | 6 |
| Undated | Childwood Park | 5 | 7 |
| Undated | Tupper Lake (2 pieces) | 5 | 8 |
| Undated | Upper Saranac Lake; Upper Saranac Lake, northern end | 5 | 9 |
| Undated | Chateaugay Lake; Chateaugay Lake - Ralph's | 5 | 10 |
| Undated | Gateways 1-16; Gateways no. 1; Gateways no. 9 Photo of rustic mantel on verso | 5 | 11 |
| Undated | Gateway no. 14; Ondawa Hotel - LeLand House | 5 | 12 |
| Undated | Port Henry mounted with Ticonderoga - Whitehall | 5 | 13 |
| Undated | Lake George (14 sections); Lake Champlain from Westport toBurlington | 5 | 14 |
| Undated | The Narrows, Lake George | 5 | 15 |
| Undated | Lower Saranac Lake; Camps on Upper Ausable Lake | 5 | 16 |
| Undated | Caldwell - Plattsburgh - Whitehall - Port Henry - Crown Point -- Port Kent - Westport - Lake Champlain maps (clipped from printed sources and mounted) | 5 | 17 |
| 1873-1894 | Van Hoevenberg, H., "The Indian Pass: An Adirondack Legend" (2 copies); letter: Van Hoevenberg to Stoddard; Newsclippings; Adirondack lectures; guidebook noticeDiary of Adirondack trip; Manuscript "The Adirondacks," and mounted photos | 6 | |
| 1874-1914 | Calling cards; Winslow, Arthur "Stadia Surveying"; "The Civil Engineers Pocketbook" by John C. Trautwin; "The Curse of the Friesland"; account books containing record of copyrights | 7 | |
| Undated | Maps sketches by those other than Stoddard. | Map folder 1 | |
| 1879 | Maps by Stoddard: Adirondacks; Warren County; McIntyre-Mt Mar Clifton; Plattsburgh; Herkimer, Hamilton and Montgomery counties (fragments); Black Mountain; Whiteface - Sarana River; Hamilton Cty and adjoining territory; and two maps by Verplank Colvin | Map folder 2 | |
| Undated | Map sketches | Map folder 3 |
