JOHN B. SILVIS
OUR FAMILY’S ROVING PHOTOGRAPHER [383.c.]
The following item appeared in an 1874 edition of the Papillion
Times (Nebraska):
J. B. Silvis—he who meanders up and down the Union Pacific in his
palatial photograph car seeking the shadows of us poor
mortals . . . . If we can’t induce you to settle among us,
we are glad . . . we can occasionally see your smiling countenance and
hear your hearty laugh.
John B. Silvis, obviously well liked by his public, was never one to
remain long in one place. Born with a wanderlust that first took him to California during
the Gold Rush, he moved from one mining camp to another. Then unable to live the rigorous
life of a miner he tried his hand at ranching, shop keeping and various other pursuits
until he finally found his niche in life . . . that of proprietor of a
Union Pacific Railroad Photograph Car. In his travels he saw and recorded our great
national experience, the settling of the American West.
Silvis was born in June 1830, second of eight children of Henry and
Catherine Eyster Silvis. He grew up in Lockhaven, Pennsylvania, a canal town named for its
location on the Susquehanna River and the Pennsylvania Canal. No doubt, views
of passing boats and log rafts influenced his life as he dreamed of far away places. When
news of the gold discovery at Sutter’s Mill in California reached the East, Silvis
could no longer resist the urge to go west and make his fortune in the world.
His early experiences in the gold mines were less than glittering. He
decided to try his hand at running a trading post with another fellow from Pennsylvania
named Matthew Stuart. They bought eight mules for transporting merchandise and on his
second trip the mules were lost. The loss came to about $1300. He moved to another county
and tried his hands mining again but was broken up and suffered fever and ague for about
16 months. Not wanting to work as a day laborer he started farming two-quarter sections of
land. He wrote back to the Clinton Democrat that Indians could be hired for some old
clothes and a few morsels of food. Many people got rich from using Indian labor but it was
not to be so for the unlucky Silvis. His Indians started getting sick and dying of Cholera
so that within a year he moved on to the Sacramento Valley and took up ranching. He tried
raising sheep, then cattle and hogs. There are tax records between 1856 and 1860 showing
that he attained some degree of prosperity.
On June 18, 1856, in Oroville, he married Virginia Ann Carpenter.
Still, he was restless and moved to another area closer to the mining activities.
Next he became a shopkeeper in partnership with a Mr. Jewett. He
invested his profits into a gold and silver mining company and it collapsed. Little did
the hapless Silvis know that later on this land would become valuable for its antimony
deposits.
He sold his store and became a saloonkeeper. Next he bought a ranch and
his wife Virginia became very unhappy with all the changes and lack of provisions and sued
him for a divorce. She had borne him four children so far. Only one of them
would live into adulthood: Charles Henry. In 1864, she gave birth to a daughter Eva
Lilley. In that summer he sold out to his partner. What happened next is lost in all the
claims and counter claims made in the divorce action. Virginia asserted that he had
abandoned her and was not providing enough necessities for the family to survive. He
denied it and counter sued for defamation of character. She then moved to Unionville,
Nevada, where she was granted a divorce and custody of the children in September 1865.
Charles Henry lived with her until she died. He never married and died in Oregon in 1934.
Sometime shortly after this Silvis became fascinated with the new art
and science of photography. It is unclear where he learned to mix the complex chemicals
required in this profession. In 1867 he went to Salt Lake City, where he met Charles
Carter who had photography experience. In December 1867 Carter and Silvis went into
business together next to Wells Fargo stage office. Someone there may have ascertained
that the days of the stage coach routes was coming to a close with the advent of the
railroad, so they commissioned Silvis to go to the different coaching stops and photograph
them. Before the driving of the golden spike at Promontory Point, the partnership
dissolved. Carter photographed the influx of Mormon pioneers and Silvis went north to the
railroad tracks to photograph the progress of the Union Pacific.
Photography using the wet plate process, was a tricky business and
conditions in the west made it a very difficult art. Windblown dust, cinders from the
trains, and difficulty in obtaining the rare chemicals needed were challenges, which
Silvis seemed to be able to overcome. It is unknown whether he was the one with the idea
of a portrait studio, developing and printing facilities and sales office all in one
mobile unit but it was an idea whose time had come. He was very successful in this and his
fame grew in leaps and bounds. The Union Pacific painted a caboose with fancy lettering
saying, "Stereoscopic & Landscape Views of Notable Points on line of Pacific RR
always on hand."
The railroad company put out posters and publicity that Silvis would be
coming with the photograph railroad car to their town on a certain day. Silvis’s
railroad car was outfitted for living with everything needed but a cook.
He even had a skylight to help in printing photographs during inclement
weather.
He decorated his coach with the horns of elk, the flag and deer
antlers. He mounted examples of his work for display inside the coach. At the time of
Garfield’s assassination he even draped his traveling studio in black bunting. He was
in demand by the railroad as well as the general public because his pictures of natural
features along the way led to more interest in the settlement of the west.
His travels took him to many towns in all kinds of weather; everything
from blizzards to flash floods. He was not immune to violence either. In June of 1873, he
had married Alice Victoria Allen in Chicago and she accompanied him in his
travels. One time, someone putting a board up against his car awakened him. He slipped out
of bed and got his pistol. He was able to get a shot at the intruder as he came in the
window. He hit him in the shoulder and tried to pursue but could not catch the intruder in
his bare feet on the sharp rocks and gravel along the tracks. Later he saw a heavy iron
bar with which the thieves had intended to dispatch him. Once he came upon a lynching,
which he dutifully photographed and advertised for sale. His ad said, "Views of the
hanging of Mitchell and Ketchum" and a mosaic of the Olive Gang for sale.
By the end of 1882, Silvis was ready to retire from photography
and the photo car. His wife was expecting the birth of their daughter Hazel and he could
see that business was decreasing because each town was getting its own resident
photographer. He had been purchasing land from his profits so he was able to settle nicely
on a 500 acre spread with a beautiful house and orchards near Elkhorn, Nebraska. He called
his place "Sunny Side." He lived there and developed the ranch until around 1892
when he sold it and moved to Tallahassee, Florida. He died there on his farm which later
became a part of Florida A & M University, on July 1, 1900.
When J. B. Silvis left Pennsylvania to join the Gold Rush in 1849 the
west was a wild area largely uninhabited except by Native Americans. By the time of his
death 50 years later there were so many settlements that there was no obvious frontier
line. During the marvelous transformation, which had taken place, Silvis had been a
participant as a miner, rancher, shopkeeper, and farmer. He had been an observer and
recorder through his proprietorship of the Union Pacific Photograph Car. But most of all
he had been a wanderer for much of his life. That was what he loved and seemed to do best!
End Notes
1. Twelfth Census of the United States (1900) State
of Florida, Leon County Precinct No. 14.,E.D., 88, Sheet 16, Line 15.
2. Clinton Democrat November 19, 1850, Silvis’s partner may
have been the same Matthew Stuart who founded the town of Weaverville.
3. John Carr, Pioneer Days in California (Eureka, CA; Times
Publishing Co., 1891) 99-100. Mules were scarce in the mining areas costing as much as
$300 a piece. The punishment for stealing mules could be a public whipping or in one case
cited, "the thieves were shot and their scalps were nailed to corral posts as a
warning to others."
4. Clinton Democrat, April 20, 1852.
5. Ibid. As reprehensible as Silvis’s behavior may seem,
paying California Indians with food and clothing for their labor was a common practice in
California at the time of the Gold Rush. (James J Rawls, "Gold Diggers: Indian Miners
in the California Gold Rush" California Historical Quarterly 55 [Spring, 1976]:30)
6. Silvis v Silvis, Civil Court Case 76, Humboldt County Clerk,
Winnemucca, Nevada. Virginia Ann Carpenter was born November 1838 in Mississippi. The
Carpenters came to California and were ranching in Chico Township in 1854.
7. Deeds Book B 373-374, Humboldt County Recorder, Winnemucca, Nevada.
8. Silvis v Silvis.
9. History of Nevada, 1881, (1881; Berkeley, CA: Howell-North,
1958), 472.
10. Certificates of Incorporation, Box 31, File 52, Nevada State
Archives, Carson City, Nevada.
11. Internal Revenue Assessment . . . Nevada, Annual List,
1864:18. Silvis and Chase were listed as "Retail Dealers in Liquor". This
represents a change in Silvis as he had been a member of the Lockhaven Temperance Society.
Clinton Democrat, February 2, 1849.
12. Silvis v. Silvis. On December 11, 1865, Virginia married
William Usher of Unionville. They moved to the Idaho Territory, then to Utah and Nevada.
Eventually they ended up in Eagle Valley, Oregon. Virginia died in 1924.
13. Ralph C. Wilson, "J. B. Silvis: Union Pacific Photographer
with Area Ties," The Post Gazette, January 21, 1986.
14. Dee Brown, Hear That Lonesome Whistle Blow (New York, NY:
Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1977) 245.
15. A copy of a photograph of the "Olive Gang" is in the
collection of the Nebraska State Historical Society, Lincoln, Nebraska.
16. Tom Anderson, Stuhr Museum of the Prairie Pioneer, Grand Island,
Nebraska. Letter to Barry Swackhamer, August 1991.
17. Waterloo Weekly Gazette, January 13, 1882.
18. Letters of Testamentary and Administration, 2:207-208, Leon
County Circuit Court Tallahassee, Florida.
19. Barry A. Swackhamer, Journal of the West. April 1994.