The collection consists of 39 homemade slides documenting Lamont, Mackinaw Island, and Petoskey, Michigan; Pointe Aux Barques Lighthouse in Port Hope, Michigan; Chicago, including buildings of the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893 seen in 1898 and 1899; two ships, the launch of the Illinois, April 22, 1899, and the U.S.S. Oregon, returning from the Philippines, 1898; and an interior view of a home in Denver, Colorado; the exterior of Hadden Hall in Debyshire, England; a view of a dock, possibly in Milwaukee, Wisconsin; and a few unidentified, miscellaneous slides. Many of the homemade slides have manufactured labels on which are typed “No.,” “Subject,” and “Manufactured by Geo. H. Luther, Austin, Ill.” Some of the slide labels are just slips of paper. The information on the slide labels is handwritten unless otherwise specified in the inventory as being typed. While most of the slides are undated they are clearly a set, so they were likely all made between 1898 and 1899. The slides were not originally numbered, but are now (if they have a label) to facilitate retrieval and use by researchers. The collection probably was in part created and in part collected by George H. Luther. Overall the slides are in good condition and are housed in their original box.
Biography:
George H. Luther was born in April 1865 in Michigan. A slide in the collection is of the “old Geo. H. Luther bridge” in Lamont, Michigan. Perhaps it was named in honor of Luther or his father. It is therefore highly probable that he was raised in Lamont. In 1900 Luther and his wife, Mary A., lived in Chicago with their two daughters, Bessie, age five, and Jeannette, age one. Luther then worked as a cashier in an office. The family visited or perhaps lived in Chicago in 1898 and 1899, during which time they photographed a Chicago Day parade, street scenes, a sculpture of Abraham Lincoln, ships, and buildings and statues remaining from the Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893. By 1924 the family had moved to Los Angeles, California. There is no information available on R. E. McLean or Wm. H. Rau. (This information is from the collection and AncestryPlus.com viewed in Jan. 2009.)
