1856-1859 96 Washington Street, Boston, Massachusetts.[1]
1860-1874 173 Washington Street, Boston, Massachusetts.1
1875 334 Washington Street, Boston, Massachusetts.1
1876-1894 333 Washington Street, Boston, Massachusetts.1
1863. During the Bradford expedition to Labrador, Critcherson & Dunmore expose nearly two hundred 14 x 18 inch wet plate negatives. In 1873 The Arctic Region, an album of 139 images, including both full-plate images and smaller illustrations, was published in London.
1869. The Philadelphia Photographer (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) 1869, P. 412-414.
The Camera Among The Icebergs. Having just returned from a photographic trip among the Icebergs, probably a few notes of it may interest your readers, and I jot them down.
The expedition was arranged by Mr. Wm. Bradford, the artist, accompanied by Dr. I. L. Hayes. It was my second trip to the regions of ice, so I know somewhat beforehand of the hardships that had to be endured and the difficulties to be met with.
We left Boston June 13th, and, arriving in New York, found one box of chemicals broken. We replaced them, and left for Halifax on the 15th. After a splendid passage we arrived there on the 17th. I found two boxes of glass broken (about one hundred sheets). I travelled all over Halifax to find some more glass, and the only place I could find any, was at a hardware store, and that was of a very poor quality. I went to Mr. Chase, the photographer there, who was very accommodating, and assisted me in albumenizing my glass. Started the next day for St. John’s, N. F., rather discouraged, but in hopes that a bad beginning would make good ending. We arrived at St. John’s on the 21st. Nothing of importance occurred on the trip. We expected to find our steamer waiting there for us, and were much disappointed to find that she had gone to Sydney for coal, for we had to wait in that dead-and-alive place a week before she returned. To pass away the time, I made some twenty-five or thirty views of very beautiful scenery thereabouts.
The steamer arrived, and we went aboard the 28th. We set a carpenter to work building a dark-closet. It was fifteen feet long by six feet wide, with all the modern improvements. Our steamer (the panther), was of three hundred and fifty tons burden, and was built very strong, on purpose for the ice, and was used for seal-fishing in the spring. The passengers and crew consisted of about thirty, the jolliest crowd that ever sailed for Greenland.
We left St. John’s on the 3d of July, and were very glad to get off. The 4th was a very unpleasant day, foggy, and a very heavy sea running; all hands a little sea-sick; could eat but little breakfast, and did not feel like celebrating much; were not at all patriotic; the foreign water had a bad effect on us. Had bad weather for a week. On July 10th we made the Greenland coast, a place called Cape Desolation. We went ashore, and found the place was rightly named, for there was not a living being on it, nothing but rocks and icebergs to be seen. We intended to leave the next day, but it blew a gale and we had to lay there four or five days. All hands began to get home sick we made a few pictures in the rain.
It cleared up on the 15th, and we sailed for Julianehaab, one of the largest places in South Greenland. The natives were all scared when we blew off steam, having never seen a steamer before. In the morning we went ashore and called on the Governor, who entertained us with a little whisky and cigars. In the afternoon we made some pictures of the Governor and his family, and some views of the Esquimaux huts. The next morning, about four o’clock, we went about twenty miles in a boat (which they call oomiack), paddled by six Esquimaux girls, who were all dressed in seal-skin suits. We took a picture of a cathedral, built nine hundred years ago by the Northmen, and did not get back until two o’clock the next morning, almost eaten up with flies and mosquitoes. We sailed
Again for a place called Kaksimuet, about a hundred miles farther north. In the evening we went on shore to the house of the Governor, who was a jolly old fellow with twenty-two children. He celebrated our arrival with a dance, and entertained us in good shape. The next day we sailed about sixty miles to the mouth of a glacier, where the icebergs break off, to take some views; worked all the forenoon; went on board to dinner; after dinner went back again, and had quite a narrow escape. Just as we were landing a large berg broke off, which sent the water up twenty feet all over us, and washed away collodion, developing glass, green baize, ect., and came very near taking us along with them. As good luck would have it, our camera and tent were up high and dry on the hill. We had to go on board and change our clothes, and the captain did not think it was safe to stop there any longer, so we got up anchor and steamed across the fiord two and a half miles, into a snug harbor. We had not been there more than half an hour when a large berg, two hundred feet high broke off, which sent the water up forty feet, and, if we had been in the old place, the steamer would have gone up twenty feet on the rocks.
The glacier comes moving slowly down from the mountain, a great river of ice, thousands of feet deep, sometimes tem miles wide, to the fiord or bay at the foot of the mountain. The Alpine glaciers roll down into the warm valleys, and there, warmed by the sun, melt away like a piece of wax before a candle, and form brooks and rivers. But in Greenland, they cannot do that. It is to cold. Therefore, as the ice at the mouth of the glacier is pushed forward to the water’s edge, it must break off in pieces and fall in, and such pieces are icebergs. When they break off, the glacier is said, by the natives, to “calve,” or “an iceberg is born.”
I can give you no idea of what a beautiful sight it is to see an iceberg break off, but we, who have seen it, will never forget it. Think of a mass of ice as big as the space of ground covered by the city of Boston, falling into the sea, and of the tremendous crash that occurs when it breaks away from its fellows, and they give it a parting salute as they groan and growl their last farewell. Now, see the waves leap up forty feet into the air, washing and lashing the glacier with spray, and sweeping everything away not strong enough to bear the shock; then watch the new-born berg as it rocks in the sea like a huge porpoise, up and down, dropping here and there portions of itself, which drive down and reappear in all directions, and you can imagine faintly what it is to see a glacier “cave an iceberg.” It is a long time before the trouble of the waters end, or before the new-born babe ceases to be rocked, and is still enough to have its picture made. It is a sight one never tires of.
The next day our party started to go on top of the glacier. It was very hard to get on to the with our cooking untensils and photographic traps, it was so very steep. We travelled six miles on the top of it. The sight was grand from there. It was about two miles wide, and the length of it we could not tell, as it was hundreds of miles. The depth of it was from five hundred to eight hundred feet. We made a few pictures, ate our dinner up there, and then started back. We sailed the next day for Ivigut, where the Kryolite mines are. Kryolite, as you know, is a mineral which is now largely used in the manufacture of Hot Cast Porcelain Glass for porcelain photographs and burnt-in-pictures, and which, I am told, will soon be introduced into the market. This is the only place in the world where the mineral is found, I believe. It imparts a whiteness and hardness to the glass unequalled by anything else, and can be had working in sheets 60 inches square. We visited the mines, and intended to make some pictures, but it rained for two days, so we started for Upernavik (which means “Summer-Place”), about eight hundred miles farther north, and the most northern settlement in Greenland where there are any white people. We steamed at half speed on account of the fog, as there was danger of running into the icebergs. We crossed the Arctic Circle, July 31st. We sailed along for a few days, and made instantaneous pictures of icebergs. August 3d we lowered a boat, went ashore, and shot about fifty ducks. The 4th, the sun shone forth for twenty-four hours for the first time. We stopped at a place called “Sanderson’s Hope,” and made a picture of a mountain 4500 feet high. We also collected a quantity of duck eggs. We arrived at Upernavik on the 6th, a place of about two hundred and fifty inhabitants; went to a dance in the evening in a cooper’s shop. The principal amusement there is dancing, and the principal smell is seal, which smell I smell yet. It was so cold your watch-chain would scorch your fingers. The next day we sailed for Melville Bay. We stopped at a place called Tursuesak, and took a picture of a house, which is the farthest house north in the world. It was taken at twelve o’clock in the morning of the 10th; went on deck and could see nothing but ice. Presently we discovered three bears; we steamed towards them through ice about two feet thick as far as we could, when they came towards us, and we shot them all. About seven o’clock we saw three more; all hands were anxious for a shot, but I told them to let me shoot first with the camera, which I did, and got two very good negatives of them from the topgallant forecastle. Walking on the ice presently, they came nearer, and all hands shot and killed them. We saw two more in the afternoon, but could not get them. We were packed in the ice all the next day, and could not get out. The ice made about two and a half inches at night. I made some pictures on the ice, but with poor success, owing to so much reflected light. I could not use my bath stronger than 18 grains. I made negatives, 14×18, with a view-tube, smallest opening, in two seconds. The next day the wind changed and broke the ice up. That night we moored alongside of an iceberg. It snowed all night. We worked all the next day making some views of icebergs, and at night, took the midnight sun, three negatives, at ten, eleven, and twelve o’clock. The next day we got high and dry on the ice, and had to stay there two days. We began to think we should have to winter there, for all we could see, for miles and miles, was solid ice. This was in latitude 75°. We wanted to get through Melville Bay, and go farther north to Smith’s Sound, but had to give it up.
August 19th, we started south. It snowed all night and froze hard, and we began to think it was time to head home. On our way back, we stopped at Upernavik for a week. I made some pictures of the natives and their huts, sleds, dogs, etc. When we went to get up anchor to leave, we found an iceberg grounded on it. It took about four hours to get clear of it. We sailed down the coast to Jacobshaven, where there is a very large glacier, but could not get to it, owing to there being so many icebergs in the fjord. We could not get to within ten miles of it, even with a small boat, so I made some negatives of the icebergs there, and the next day we started for Disco, and made some views of some high cliffs, and of a whaler that was wrecked there. That finished my photographing in Greenland. I made between three and four hundred negatives.
September 16th, was pleasant, and we worked all day packing and securing things for sea. All hands were in good spirits with the thoughts of going home. Went on shore in the evening to have the last dance and to say farewell.
September 17th we left for home. The Governor fired six cannons when we left. We arrived in Battle Harbor, on the Labrador coast, September 23d; found some newspapers there, a thing we had not seen for three months. We left the next day; arrived in St. John’s September 26th, and, in a fortnight from that time, we were at home, safe and well.
My great trouble, while away, was reflected light. Everything worked flat, and I could not force the negatives up—the stronger the bath the flatter the negative.
My friend, Mr. Critcherson, of Worcester, was with me, and I suppose no one ever photographed farther north, or in colder weather than we did, but we were well repaid. You shall see prints from our best negatives soon. Truly yours, J. L. Dunmore, Black’s Studio, Boston
1901. History of The Military Company of the Massachusetts now called The Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company of Massachusetts. 1837-1888.
John L. Dunmore (1866), photographer, of Boston son of John and Martha W. (Lapham) Dunmore, was born in Dorchester, January 5, 1833. He married, September 8, 1857, Elizabeth B. Kent. He attended the public schools in Dorchester; followed the sea for five years afterward, and then learned the photographer’s business, which he has since pursued. He accompanied the expeditions under Bradford to Labrador in 1863, and under Hays to Greenland in 1869, as photographer. He was for several years in the employ of J. W. Black (1865), 333 Washington Street, Boston.
Mr. Dunmore (1866) was honorably discharged from the Artillery Company May 31, 1880.
1897 June 2. Boston Daily Advertiser. (Boston. Massachusetts.) June 2, 1897, Vol. 169, No. 130, P. 8.
Deaths. Dunmore—At Somerville, May 29, John L. Dunmore, 64 yrs. 6 months (sic.)
1897 June 2. Boston Evening Journal. (Boston. Massachusetts.) June 2, 1897, Vol. LXIV, No. 20966, P. 8.
Deaths. Dunmore—At Somerville, May 29, John L. Dunmore, 64 yrs. 4 months.
1897 June 2. Boston Morning Journal. (Boston. Massachusetts.) June 2, 1897, Vol. LXIV, No. 20966, P. 8.
Deaths. Dunmore—At Somerville, May 29, John L. Dunmore, 64 yrs. 4 months.
[1] A Directory Of Massachusetts Photographers 1839-1900.
Pioneer American Photographers, 1839 - 1860 