Photographs
The Stewart-Swift Research Center’s Photographic Collection of over 20,000 items is a treasure trove of nineteenth and early twentieth century visual records of Middlebury, Addison County, and broader Vermont.
The images cover a wide range of subjects including the transformation of Vermont’s landscape; local towns and their early beginnings; historic architecture of buildings, churches, and residential homes; bridges, railroads, and rural schools; fires, floods and other disasters; social and farming activities; portraits of prominent citizens and ordinary people, and much more.
The collection represents a cross section of historical photography from the medium’s inception through the present times. Included are a variety of the nineteen and twentieth century photographic processes and presentations. Many were taken by local professional photographers, but some are run-of-the-mill snapshots by ordinary people taken with their own cameras. Besides photographs, the collection includes glass and film negatives, lantern and 35mm slides, and more.
How to Find
The Center’s Photographic Collection consists of multiple units. A large of number of photographs is organized into the General Photograph Collection. See subject Index to the the image collection for general overview of topics included.
Many more photographs are housed with family and institutional papers and are part of the Manuscript Collection. The Center’s online catalog may be consulted to locate these photographs.
In addition, there are individual photographic collections, such as the George N. Lathrop Photographic Collection, Ruluff A. Dean Photographic Archive, Christopher Irion’s Collection, and others; over fifty photographic albums; and glass plate negatives, slides and other photographic formats. Presently, there is no single index to these resources and multiple finding aids must be consulted at the Research Center.
To locate specific individuals, see also Index to Persons in Visual Collections.
A portion of the Center’s Photographic Collection is digitized (close to 7,000 items) and can be viewed online. See the Stewart-Swift Research Center Digital Collections section for details.
Selected Collections and Groups of Photographs
Early Photography: Case Photographs (1840s-1860s)
Daguerreotypes, ambrotypes and tintypes portraying early inhabitants and views of Middlebury and its vicinity.
Stereographic Photographs Collection (1870s-1920s)
Views of early Middlebury, Bristol, Lincoln, other Addison County towns, and broader Vermont; social events and topics of local interest. Many by local photographers: O.C. Barnes, Charles E. Smith, A.J. Styles, and others.
Ruluff A. Dean Photographic Archive (1880s)
Glass plate negatives and other documentation recently acquired from Ruluff A. Dean’s estate, a local photographer who practiced in Middlebury, Brandon and other Vermont locations. Included are portraits, town views and scenery.
George W. Lathrop Photographic Collection (1940s-1960s)
Over four thousand prints and negatives taken by a self-taught local photographer including aerial views of Western and Central Vermont, aviation, hunting, accidents and portraits of family and friends.
