Solomon Butcher
American photographer / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Solomon D. Butcher (January 24, 1856 ā March 18, 1927) was an itinerant photographer who spent most of his life in central Nebraska, in the Great Plains region of the United States. A settler under the Homestead Act, he began in 1886 to produce a photographic record of the history of settlement in the region in the region including some of a small group of African Americans in Cherry County around the majority black town of Dinwiddy. Over 3,000 of his negatives survive; more than 1,000 of these depict sod houses. Butcher wrote two books incorporating his photographs: Pioneer History of Custer County and Short Sketches of Early Days in Nebraska (1901), and Sod Houses, or the Development of the Great American Plains (1904).
Solomon D. Butcher | |
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Born | January 24, 1856 |
Died | March 18, 1927 (aged 71) |
Occupation | Photographer |
Known for | Photographs of Nebraska homesteaders |
Signature | |
Butcher was unable to achieve financial success as a farmer, as a photographer, or in a number of other schemes later in his life, and at the time of his death felt that he had been a failure. However, the number and scope of his photographs of Nebraska pioneer life have made them a valuable resource to students of that period of history, and they have become a staple of historical texts and popular works alike. His oeuvre has been described as "the most important chronicle of the saga of homesteading in America".[1]