PBA Galleries

7 pp. total + stampless address leaves

George Arms writes to his cousin Christopher Tilden, Palmyra [Manchester], New York.  Written as a traveling daguerreotypist in upstate New York, most of the letters are family news, descriptions of the countryside and agricultural gossip. But the 19 year-old youth also describes the hard life of the wandering daguerreotypist, six years after Daguerrian photography came to America: “You perhaps will think from my staying so long at Penn Yan that my business here must be very good, but nothing extra, it has taken so long to wake up the people. there was no less than six opperators here at this place who reside here, had I known that, I should not have stoped here. the people had got happily sick of Daguerreotypes & would not even look at my work at first, but I managed to sell two or three that I took extra pains with - they were so much better than any here before that I have done a little. Shall leave here for Ovid next Wednesday… I was a few days at Branchport…not altogether the most delightful spot I have seen, situated on the west branch of Crooked Lake…We (as I have taken in with me a partner who so far I think very well of, if it is not as profitable is more pleasant & we have fine times together) were favoured with seranades every night from frogs & Mosquetoes. They comence their concert about 5 oclock P.M. & when we are trying to get sleep they present their bills to be settled which call for all the blood we could spare… Our Board here [Ovid] is first rate & we are expecting fine times, but cannot tell how business will be as we only arrived to day, but have pitched our tent & taken two pictures, better so far than I have done before & better than is usually done I think by my brother operators…" Arms did not long pursue the unprofitable life of a photographer, but returned to his home in a farming community north of Schenectady, later moving to Michigan to become a prosperous lumberman.