MOUNT VERNON — Once a month, we feature a pair of vintage cabinet card photographs taken in Knox County which do not have names identifying the people in the pictures.
They were all taken by photographers who had studios in Mount Vernon. Cabinet cards were a popular format for sharing photos in the late 1800s and early 1900s.
Typically, photo paper is glued to a sturdy piece of cardboard that often features the photographer’s name or studio. In theory, the subject’s name could have been written on the back, but in this collection of cards, no names are present.
No one was able to identify our subjects from last time, but one reader noted that if you zoomed in very closely to the embossed “Art Gallery” in the bottom left corner of the photos, it had a tiny logo next to it of a star inside a crescent.
That strongly suggests these were early photos by the Star & Crescent Art Gallery, a photography studio that will figure heavily in the upcoming mystery photos. We’ll discuss what little is known about that studio in future installments.
For this month, we’re featuring two photographs from a prominent photographer who was active in Mount Vernon from about 1870 to 1895. He bills himself on one of the cards as “A. B. Elliott, Artist,” and on both pictures uses an elaborate design on the back advertising “artistic photos.”
As he identifies as an artist, perhaps he painted his own backdrops, for they are quite elaborate.
In picture #3, a girl in a white dress with high-top boots leans against a prop tree stump next to a palm frond. The backdrop shows a fence and gate.
Photo #4 shows two formally dressed women, perhaps a mother and daughter? The elder sits in a chair, while the younger and more fashionably dressed woman stands. The backdrop shows the corner of a fancy house with a tree in the distance.
The photographer’s full name was Armer B. Elliott. Research shows that he was born over in Nashville, in Holmes County, in 1844. He opened his studio in Mount Vernon by 1870, at 137 South Main, living upstairs above the studio. He apparently did a good business as a photographer, remaining in the same location for about 30 years before he sold the studio and went into retirement. He passed away in 1914.
Please share this column far and wide so we can try to ID these photos. If you have any leads on who these people might be, contact me here at Knox Pages. I’ll report back next month on any progress naming these folks, and bring forth two more cards.
