There is an older, small, slim volume in the Meekins Library collection. It has clearly been well used—we librarians would say well loved—with its gray and gold and silver and bronze distinctive paper cover that looks like rough stones in a path. The volume is “Songs of A Wanderer”, and it is full of the poems and evocative and stunning black and white photographs by the photojournalist and portraitist, Jessie Tarbox Beals (1870-1942). A gift to the library in 1931, she inscribed it with her name, and the inscription: “A wanderer’s heart may fly afar—but come a-singing home.” And wrote too, that she was a “teacher in the Williamsburg Primary Schools 1888-1891.”
Jessie started her career as a prominent photographer in Williamsburg. It was serendipity. She maintained a deep affection for the town all her life. When she was 18 years old and teaching school in a rural schoolhouse on the outskirts of town, Jessie saw an advertisement in the “Youth’s Companion” offering a free camera to anyone selling a new subscription. An enterprising young woman, she found a subscriber and sent in the $1.75. The tin box camera, 6 plates and developing and printing instructions arrived. She tried it out and never looked back. As she said: “I learned to love to use it.” She soon upgraded her camera.
Though born in Ontario, her brother Paul had settled in town, so Jessie came after graduating from the Collegiate Institute of Ontario. Eventually her mother joined her, and they made their home here. In 1889 Jessie opened the town’s first photography studio on the front lawn of their house. Jessie did not stay long. By 1893 she had moved to Greenfield. In 1900 she sold a photo of a drake and 7 ducklings swimming in a roadside pool, to “The Buffalo Courier”. Called “On the Road to Albany” the photograph reminded her of a politician and his henchmen, satirizing a current New York State election. She became head of the “Courier’s” photographic department, and her career expanded.
In addition to her freelance news photographs, which chronicled people from all walks of life places, and places and life’s events, Jessie was well-known for her images of President Theodore Roosevelt. She also photographed Williamsburg’s own Helen E. James. Jessie was the first published female photojournalist and the first female night photographer. As she wrote: “Picturing life has always been of great interest to me…”
Jessie moved to Greenwich Village in New York City in 1905, where she captured its Bohemian life on film and lived there until she died. Many of the photographs in her poetry book are city scenes and she noted that almost all of the poems in her volume “were written on the backs of the menus at Moris and Bertolittis.” There was a 10-year hiatus in California, where she became noted for her garden photographs. Jessie sent the Meekins volume from Hollywood in August 1931, where, reflecting on her life, she wrote this about herself:
“Myself”
A little bit grayer,
A little bit slower,
A little bit older.
But still a good goer.
A little bit wiser,
A little bit kinder,
To everyone’s failings
A little bit blinder.
Jessie dedicated the privately-printed book to “My Friends—Known and Unknown.” She wrote: “Wherever I have gone the beauty of life, passing through my heart, has taken shape in the crystals of my poetry and my photographs.” She writes of human emotions of joy and sadness, the stages of life, the natural world and more. The poems are rich in words as her photographs are rich in tone. This poem, from the perspective of a young girl, adds a bit of humor.
“The Apple Tree”
The orchard is so still and cool,
I go out there when I come from school.
There’s one old tree that I love the best
I take my books and read and rest.
I am not alone when in the tree.
The birds all come and talk to me—
They tell me things I never knew—
I sometimes laugh—they don’t seem true.
I don’t see where they kept their legs
When they were fastened up in eggs!
It must have been a tight old squeeze
Before they got out in the trees!
Their Pa’s and Ma’s just fed ’em worms—
I’d think they’d be afraid of germs!
Worms is an awful funny diet—
It takes a lot to keep ’em quiet.
But Ma says, “Parents always know
The food to make their children grow”—
I guess I’ll stick to bread and meat
’Nd let them have their worms to eat.
Even with her growing fame, Jessie held Williamsburg close to her heart. In her way, Jessie did return home. A tombstone bearing her name is in the Village Hill Cemetery. Vintage photographs from “Songs of a Wanderer.”
Daria D’Arienzo, Meekins Archivist. #throwbackthursday; #tbt.
Posted to Facebook 3/6/2025
