Alfred T. Anderson became a photographer's apprentice when he was 16. This career would eventually produce a historic visual record of an important period in the history of Kearney as well as Nebraska. The young Swedish immigrant had come to this area when he was 10. One of Kearney's first families was August and Ingar (Timmans) Anderson who left Sweden in 1867, spent some time in Illinois and arrived in Kearney in November, 1875 to open a wagon and carriage manufacturing company.
"Father announced I would start my work with J.A. Stridborg at his office on south Central on September 1, 1881," wrote Mr. Anderson in 1945. The studio was in a small building south of the Harrold House. "The first sitting I made was of a woman who came from the Harrold House for tintypes; the head rest was very much in evidence in the finished pictures but she accepted them." The building also served as his home. A daytime work table became a box bed with mattress at night. With the skylight overhead the winters were cold. Within three years the young man was managing the business and by 1886 had started his own studio. "My father signed a note at the Axtell bank for $50.00.... it was renewed for two additional months, but at the end of that time I paid. I ate my 10¢ breakfasts at Hooley's bakery sitting on a stool, eating two rolls and coffee."
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| A.T. Anderson, 1865-1958 |
The Kearney "boom" period brought financial stability to the struggling enterprise. George W. Frank's son, Augustus, hired him to take fifty 8x10 views of Kearney and ordered six prints of each. "For this I was to receive $150.00 which was a huge order for a poor photographer who didn't own an 8x10 camera." The subject matter was to be factories, industries, residences and general Kearney scenes. This commission was accomplished by borrowing a camera from the Geo. Heyn Co. in Omaha. The shots were made by walking to the sites, riding the electric cars when he could, and, sometimes Mr. Frank took him with his horse and buggy. "This order really gave me a start for the people who were investing money in this western project ordered prints from time to time and that went on for ten years....The men with silk hats used to come down and sit around in my little studio ordering views." Then in the fall of 1888 a National Guard Encampment west of town drew a Harper's magazine representative, J.A. Finch, who came to photograph the officers and groups. With his assistance Mr. Anderson used a larger 16x20 camera but explained later that he used a kit to cut the negatives down to 14x17. He sold over 100 of these prints for $1.00. Mr. Anderson was ambitious and filled his home with literature on improving the mind and oneself. A perfectionist and diligent in all his endeavors, he sometimes worked through the night, especially at holiday time.
From 1808 Central Avenue the studio was moved to 2111 Central where it remained for 14 years. In January, 1909 he moved into a one-story brick structure of his own design at 14 West 22nd Street, where the business continues to this day under other ownership.
According to his daughter, Miriam Anderson Worlock, her father was a competent cabinet maker who had a great reverence for his tools. During the interview with Mrs. Worlock a photograph of a violin was shown as evidence of his craftsmanship. He made the instrument in August, 1882. Information on the reverse side revealed that he had given the violin to his brother Frans immediately after its completion. His musicianship included playing the organ and piano as well as singing. He was a soloist at the Baptist Church which he attended and also played piano duets with his wife. Oil painting was another hobby.
Miss Alma M. Wickstrom of Holdrege became his bride on the 11th of September, 1892. She graduated from high school in Holdrege and taught school near Wilcox. Her family had been in the group with the Andersons who came to this country from Sweden. She assisted him in the studio for a time. Three daughters completed the family. Ruth Mathilda, who was named after her grandmother, lives in New York City where she recently completed 60 years at the Hispanic Society of America. Miriam has lived all of her life in Kearney. She took over her father's business in 1922 when his eyes began to fail and managed the studio until it was sold in 1944. Mrs. Worlock, the mother of three sons, was married to an attorney, Montague Worlock. She is an accomplished painter and has been recently honored by the selection of one of her works for the Nebraska Art Collection. A third daughter, Elizabeth Theodora Uldall, arrived eighteen years after the second daughter and was her father's favorite, according to Mrs. Worlock. She is in the linguistics and phonetics department at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland.
The following memoir was submitted by Ruth M. Anderson of New York City:
My Father, Alfred T. Anderson, PhotographerTo my Mother, Father was an ornament of the first water; she wore him as though he were a jewel. His white pompadour and white goatee were distinctive. He carried his clothes well and took an interest in them. Abroad, he had a suit made in Spain and another by a Savile Row tailor in London. The English tailor loudly bemoaned the cut of the Spanish suit with its high-waisted trousers.
Father was not the gregarious sort, but he always enjoyed at least one good friend. From young manhood he had Emil Soderquist, who earned a captaincy in the Spanish-American war. Another crony was the Rev. Charles Stephens, pastor of the First Baptist Church, who took a great interest in photography. Father went with him to visit the Indian cave dwellings, and at one time Mr. Stephens took over the studio when Father needed a change. He often prayed to get away. The most complete change he had was a year with me in Spain, making photographs for the Hispanic Society of America in New York. After several months of rugged winter life in villages and provincial towns, far from central heating, from Mother's comforting solicitude and my young sister's playful companionship, he remarked, "You must be very careful what you pray for, because you are extremely apt to get it."
Father was a faithful deacon of the First Baptist Church and sometimes a member of the choir. I believe his only public service was on the Board of Education, of which he was vice-president when I graduated from High School in 1910. Later he joined Kearney merchants who set up a fair in the new Tollefsen garage building at Central Avenue and 25th Street. Each merchant had a booth for a week, I believe. Afterward many of them united in organizing the Country Club, Father being thus an early, if not a charter, member. Miriam and I gave him golf clubs, but he never used them, and refrained from giving us carpenter's tools in return.
Anderson and his high-wheeled bicycle.
In 1917 Father bought an automobile, a Jeffrey touring car, but so far as I remember he drove it only twice, both times with mildly disastrous results. He enjoyed riding with someone else at the wheel. While courting Mother, he rode a high-wheeled bicycle to the Axtell farm where she lived. In an 1890 photograph he prepares to mount this bicycle wearing a small straw hat, striped shirt, bow tie, and well-fitted knee breeches. Thus clad, he took part in a "century" to Genoa, Nebraska. Riding a hundred miles over the dusty roads of that era must have been an ordeal. Father and I once rode together into the country on normal bicycles, normal except that he had mounted a sail on his crossbar. The first horses we met reared straight up on their hind legs. As other teams came into sight, he got off and laid down the contraption before horses and driver could be unnerved.
Father was interested in music. As a young man he made a violin, and in the nineties played a beautiful guitar inlaid with mother-of-pearl, which is now owned by my nephew in California. He played the piano also, principally Swedish pieces from a collection which included works by the noted composer Gunnar Wennerberg. Father took part as a tenor in the chorus trained about 1913 to produce The Messiah, under the direction of Mrs. Grace Steadman. At the final performance the chorus was accompanied by a Minnesota symphony orchestra. The orchestra conductor had supposed he would direct the chorus as well as the orchestra - some of his men rebelled at serving under a woman - but Mrs. Steadman had other ideas and she prevailed, conducting both chorus and orchestra in a triumphant performance.
Father prospered as a photographer, and from a small studio south of the tracks he moved to an upstairs location on Central Avenue north of 21st Street. When a circus came to town eight little girls, aged four and upward, of our Kenwood neighborhood gathered in the studio. From there we were invited into Dr. Morrow's dental offices which had two large windows overlooking the parade - elephants setting down their big round flat feet in our very own dust, and striped tigers yawning lazily in bright blue carriages. After all the wonders, capped by the calliope, had passed, we went back to the studio and Father gave us ice cream under the skylight.
In 1908 he was able to build a ground-floor studio designed by himself. When the Dramatic Club was organized, Father let us use the large "operating room" for our productions. With the painted backgrounds we could create rooms - one background represented a library and there was an actual window but no doors - and we had chairs, benches and tables for furnishings. What was not needed for the stage we lined up as seats for the audience. We gave plays such as Booth Tarkington's Clarence with Agnes Frank and handsome Ralph Buddington as stars.
Father was a clever carpenter and cabinet maker. One of my earliest birthday recollections is of his bringing home for me a small table on his bicycle. He had made the table in secret at the studio, and immediately I put it to use giving a tea party for my dolls. In our yard at 1410 Fifth Avenue he built a playhouse about 8 by 10 feet with two sliding windows, one at each side of the door in front, and a window swinging outward into the arms of a cherry tree at the back. He hung the walls with flowered paper topped with a border of romantic castles. A favorite game with our neighbor children was an attack by Indians, evacuees escaping with some difficulty out the back window. Peaceful domesticity we enjoyed by baking dollar-sized pancakes on a small kerosene stove. At his house on West 22nd Street Father made a white lattice fence for the backyard, and for my cottage in Westchester County, New York, he provided lattice to carry vines over the screened-in porch.
He once received a gold medal from a photographic association for the excellence of his work. The pictures submitted may have included a popular one of Miriam, aged six, draped in white cheesecloth and holding a white paper lily to represent Easter. He grew to be well known in Buffalo and neighboring counties. Bess Furman, a reporter on the Hub who became a distinguished journalist in Washington, D.C., found it helpful to visit the studio regularly in order to list visitors to Kearney from the names which appeared in our register. Father made photographs for the Union Pacific Railroad, and placed an enlargement of a great new engine fuming smoke on the wall of the studio reception room, to the delight of children awaiting
their turn before the camera.
In his elder years Miriam, Beatrice Worlock, Father and Mother would join forces to shop for groceries on Friday morning. While the others were searching the aisles, Father would sit on a bench near the window and happily receive greetings from people who had posed for him as children, as brides and grooms, as heads of families. After shopping the family would go home to drink coffee, while Miriam read letters accumulated during the week, from her sons at college, from me in New York, from Elizabeth abroad, or from Mother's Sunday School boys who had scattered over the earth.
I must close with appreciation of Father's support during that year of work together in Spain. Not only did his scholarly appearance and courtly manner help to open doors, but despite his limited command of Spanish he would fare out into the shops to find little luxuries for me such as honey and marmalade not available in hotels, and also such necessities as screws and hypo. When he could not find a word in his little dictionary, his facile pencil would draw a picture of the object in question, and the fascinated shopkeeper would outdo himself to procure what was needed.
Unpublished autobiography by A.T. Anderson in the possession of Miriam Worlock; Interview with
Miriam Worlock, 1982; Letters from Ruth M. Anderson and Elizabeth Uldall, 1982; Bassett's History of Buffalo County, 1916; Kearney Daily Hub, October 24, 1938.
Proofread 2-2-2004
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