We Call it Commuting Today
Commuting was not something that you did in 1855. But two members of the Valentine family did what looked like commuting in their day. Photographer Edwin Valentine lived in East Bradford just over the line from West Chester Borough, he toggled between his daguerreotype gallery and helping on the family farm. His father did the same thing. Jonathan Valentine served as the Auditor of Chester County for over 20 years, while managing his East Bradford farm. Today it is part of the O’er Meade development on Strasburg Road.
But did this dual responsibility hurt Edwin Valentine’s business? He took over Pierce & Johnson’s studio in April of 1855. We still see advertisements for it in September that year. We find him listed in the Septennial Census for 1857 as a daguerreotypist living in East Bradford. It is not clear if he was operating the gallery continuously during those years. But since his father moved back and forth between a desk job in the borough and the farm, Edwin had a good model. Certainly, he made sure to be in the studio on market days and when the court was in session. These activities brought plenty of customers for portraits. At harvest time people understood if he was not in the studio.
I have revised Edwin Valentine’s biography a couple of times recently when new information bubbled to the surface unexpectedly. One of my unsolved riddles was when during the 1860s did he occupy the studio at No. 7 E. Gay Street. Using my studio succession data, he could have been there in after the removal of S. R. Fisher in September of 1863 and the occupancy of Duval & West in April of 1864, or beginning sometime in 1867 after the removal of R. M. J. Reed. Newspapers.com suddenly had an advertisement that I had never seen before for his studio at the above address in 1867! Bit by bit the pieces of the puzzle are found.
Most of all, Edwin Valentine wanted to be a photographer. He evolved from the daguerreotype into paper photography and tintypes, even though sometimes circumstances took him to do other things for a while, like farming, or selling books. Read about his interesting career in his biography.
