In the mid-1890s, a man named John Henry Tarbell moved from Massachusetts to Asheville, North Carolina to open a photography studio. According to Tarbell’s biography, the studio operated between 1896 and 1901 but some of the pictures are dated as far back as 1894. What’s certain is that in 1902 Tarbell returned to New England to live out his years.

These are some of the glass plate negatives in the John H. Tarbell Collection in the UNC archives. The images are unusually sharp and clear! If you click on the photos and zoom in, you can see fine details. The pictures were taken in Asheville and the immediate vicinity, but no one is identified by name.

It’s a curious collection when you consider that at the time, only people with means could afford to have pictures made. It’s evident that some families did have money but just as clear that others did not.

This little girl is picking flowers and looks pretty skeptical.

A little bit of camouflage in this picture:

Asheville is in western North Carolina, so this man may have been Cherokee.

He took several pictures of this man. He may have been a moderately prosperous farmer. In the first one, he’s rolling a wheelbarrow, accompanied by his dog. This is a very unusual picture for a studio photographer.

Next we find him reading the newspaper.

And finally, on what must have been a Sunday,  dressed up, smoking his pipe, and whittling.  He sure liked that hat!

I thought perhaps this was the farmer’s wife, but I doubt it. She looks a little too fancy for him. I’m curious about the cap and the bow around her neck. They look like they’re made of gauze!

This 1901 picture shows a smiling woman measuring the height of two small children. That little boy looks ornery!

These children are neat and clean and look well-fed, but the state of their clothes and shoes suggests they didn’t have very much.