John Reid
Paterson, New Jersey-based pioneer photographer John Reid (1835-1911) was born in Scotland and came with his family to the U.S. ca. 1841. He was the subject of an article, "A Famous Photographer of Iron Horses" in the March 1937 issue of Railroad Stories, 115-17. As an apprentice in the Rogers Locomotive Works, after his family moved later to Paterson, New Jersey, the Railroad Stories article relates, Reid "became interested in daguerreotype pictures" (115). By 1857 he was sharing an office with a brother who was a dentist, A. & J. Reid, with John having taken up photography. This is confirmed from a web-based transcribed version by Anne Mount West of the 1859 Paterson, NJ directory, where John Reid, Jr. is listed, "[Reid & Brother] dentist & Daguerreotypes" at 83 Main Street, with a house address of 24 Fair.
Reid's locomotive photographs are "known" (Rialroad Stories, 115) first to have been made shortly after the late 1850s origin of the business. By 1860 this previously too-expensive record was being used for "every different order." Reid introduced the convention of taking these photographs "from a position just ahead of the smoke box," yielding a pleasing and symmetrical image. At that time Paterson was home to the Danforth, Cooke & Co. and New Jersey Locomotive Works (to 1867), as well. The Railroad Stories article reproduces a Rogers and two Danforth, Cooke images (116); Lake Forest's Paddock collection also includes an 8 x 10 negative of the office staff of the New Jersey Locomotive Works in front of a town house with a sign, apparently their corporate office. This firm was "taken over by D.B. Grant in 1863 or 1864," according to John H. White, Jr. in his 1968 American Locomotives, an Engineering History, 1830-1880 (John Hopkins), p. 358. Thus, the Lake Forest Reid collection dates back to the Civil War era. But Reid continued to use wet plates "almost until the time of his death" (117).
The periodical article points out that Reid had a wide-ranging business beyond the local locomotive views. The Lake Forest group of negatives (8 x10 and 11 x 14) includes also scenes of Passaic (including one ironic view of a fire-destroyed fire station and fire pump), and notably two 8 x 10 negatives of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago: one of two mortars near the lake and one from the Court of Honor looking out into the lake, with the administration building and the model of the ship Illinois just beyond in the water. The article reports that Reid won medals there, as at the 1878 Paris Exposition.
Reid printed his own pictures, with his own rag paper and his own emulsion. They were superior and helped his prints survive when prints by others have deteriorated beyond use: "...[t]here is nothing that can compare with a large, clear original photograph of an iron horse made by John Reid." The Paddock collection also includes several Reid prints.
Arthur H. Miller
Archivist and Librarian
for Special Collections
October 7, 2009