Ancestry Magazine

On 31 August 1911, several hundred descendants of John and Agnes Barr gathered in Waynesville, Illinois, for a family reunion. The attendees visited with seldom-seen relatives, surely exclaimed over the many sets of twins present, listened to music provided by the Waynesville band, heard numerous speeches, and dined on food prepared by the ladies of the Waynesville Methodist church. Even on this summer day, most of the men wore suits and ties; bow ties were in the minority. The older women favored staid black dresses, while the younger ones wore high-necked, long-sleeved white blouses with contrasting skirts, although a few chose dresses in plaid or print. Many women wore straw hats topped with flowers, but one frivolous creation seems to have been designed of fur or feathers, and another resembles a beehive. Many of the little girls were dressed in white.

How do I know so much about the clothing this family wore to a reunion some ninety years ago? Because many attendees ordered a souvenir copy of a remarkable photograph taken of the event, and one such photograph has found its way into my family history collection. The photo, which is eight inches tall and forty-one inches wide, shows 367 people. In the center is a woman in a white blouse with a brooch, holding a little girl with big, white bows in her hair. They are my great-grandmother and my great-aunt, who journeyed from Otoe County, Nebraska, to attend the reunion.

Panoramic Cameras
The photograph is of a type that can be of special interest to family historians. It is a panoramic photograph, also occasionally referred to as a panograph. Some prof essional photographers take panoramic photographs today, but the height of their popularity was in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Panoramic photographs as long as twenty feet have been produced, and some show as much as a 360-degree view. Typically, though, these photos are twenty-eight inches to six feet wide and about ten inches tall.

Early photographers saw commercial potential in creating panoramic photographs—particularly views of cities, which had long been popular subjects of panoramic etchings. Some of the earliest panographs were made simply by mounting single daguerreotypes or photographs in a series. In the late 1800s, though, special cameras and film were designed to facilitate such unique picture-taking. Some of these cameras were even marketed to amateur photographers.

Two of the most popular camera models for panoramic photography were the Kodak Panoram and the Conley Panoramic. They used roll film and a swing lens to photograph scenes almost 180-degrees wide, but produced prints less than twelve inches long.

Because this type of photography was best done using special equipment, it became a type of specialty. Professional photographers such as Wasson Studio of Decatur, Illinois, who took the photograph of the Barr family reunion described above, preferred the Cirkut camera. Patented in 1904, the Cirkut was mounted on a tripod and used large-format film. As the entire camera and film rotated on the tripod, it could take 360-degree images that could be twenty feet long.

Today, Cirkut cameras are sought by museum curators, camera collectors, and photographers, both professional and amateur, who are inter ested in using them to take photographs. An Internet search reveals much about the various models, workings, replacement parts, and type of film for such cameras. And a history of panoramic photography that focuses on camera development (pardon the pun), including a detailed timeline, is available online at: www.cirkutpanorama.com/cameras.html.

Subjects of Panographs
One of the goals of photographers specializing in panoramic photography was to sell as many copies as possible. Thus, they chose topics of broad appeal, including school buildings, cityscapes, and sightseeing or architectural sites. Entrepreneurial photographers also promoted their services to large groups of people (as in the case of my family reunion photo of some 367 people), hoping that each individual would buy a copy. Many companies scheduled panoramic photographs of their facilities and employees. Even the military found panoramic photographs useful; it used the photos in tactical planning, especially in World War I.

The variety of subjects may surprise you. For example, photographs taken by Charles L. Wasson include images of the buildings of James Millikin University in Decatur as well as the buildings and children at the I.O.O.F. (International Order of Odd Fellows) Orphans home in Lincoln, Illinois. The photograph shows the boys playing football on the far left, the girls playing a circle game on the far right, and the staff and younger children standing around the fountain in the center. His 1909 photograph shows students in the corn course at Illinois University, Champaign. This particular panograph shows more people than are in the Barr Reunion photograph, including a few female students.
These three images by Wasson are now part of the Prints and Photographs collection at the Library of Congress. The Library acquired a number of panoramic photographs when photographers registered their copyrights to protect their sales. And because the photos are difficult to work with and to reproduce, the 4,000-plus panoramic images in the Library’s collection became a priority in its digitizing projects.

Two sections of the Library of Congress website are devoted to panoramic photographs. You’ll want to check out both. The Prints & Photographs Reading Room has a discussion of panoramic photography that was prepared in 1997 by Assistant Curator, Carol Johnson. There is also a link to the Prints and Photographs Online Catalog, which contains 4,200 digitized images. Also, “Taking the Long View: Panoramic Photographs, 1851–1991” on the American Memory section highlights many interesting images and provides access to the digitized collection.

It is clear from some items in the collection that many of these photos were intended to be more than just photographs; the photographers saw them as artistic creations. A panograph of the 1909 St. Louis Cardinals shows the athletes standing in a straight line, with arms behind their backs. And a 1914 panoramic photograph of the cadets at Omaha High School in Nebraska shows the high school on a hill in the background, with cadet units artistically arranged in the foreground.

The use of these panoramic photos for family historians is clear. Simply scrolling through the convenient list of photos available on the Library of Congress website will reveal many that could be pertinent to your family’s history. You may be able to find an image of a town where your ancestor lived, a group of which he or she was a member, a military location at which he was stationed, even a sporting event you know he or she would have likely attended. And you can easily order copies of these photos for your personal collection.

Networking the Barr Photo
My great-grandmother’s copy of the reunion photograph hung in the home of my great-aunt and her husband until a fire destroyed their furniture store in Auburn, Nebraska, and with it, their residence on the second floor. Fortunately for me, many years ago another Barr descendant found a lab that specialized in aerial photography and had duplicates made of his copy of the photo.

My own treasured copy of the Barr reunion photograph hangs in my living room. I never pass by it without being amazed at how they persuaded 367 people—including a large number of children—to sit still for so long. On the other hand, that might explain why so few of them are smiling. Identifying all of the individuals in the reunion photograph has been a project of one relative, Dwight Barr, for more than two decades. I still have his dot matrix printouts from 1983 correlating names to a careful tracing of the photograph in which every face has been assigned a number.
Dwight’s goal of identifying the individuals shown in the photo has
seen much progress with the growth of the Internet. The Mindspring website now has a digital image of the photograph, with numbers correlating to faces. More than two hundred individuals have now b een identified.

If you have an old, large-group panoramic photograph in your personal collection, an online identification project might be worthwhile. If not, be sure you check the Internet regularly for unique photos that may be pertinent to your family’s history. You never know what may be out there just waiting for you to discover.