Byron Wilson McLain

American, 1843-1927

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After an enlistment of three months in the 55th Regiment, Indiana Infantry, Byron Wilson McLain was a professor of Natural Science at Fort Wayne College. From 1870 to 1872 he again was professor, as well as acting President of Upper Iowa University. Leaving that post he spent the next year travelling Europe before returning to a post at Wabash College. There he was associated with the College of Photography, for which he travelled, taking stereo views in Huntington, Indiana and as far afield as Marshall, Texas. At some point while in Wabash he established B. W. McLain & Co., which published his views. By 1881 he was in Saint Louis where he worked as an artist, illustrating pamphlets for the St. Louis Railroad, and managing the art department of the printing form of Woodward & Tiernan. In 1885 and 1886 he was an artist in Toledo, Ohio. By 1889 he had gone back to acedemia as professor and president of U. S. Grant College in Athens, Tennessee. He spent time in various professional capacities in Saint Louis, Dade and Tampa, Florida and Johnson City, Tennessee before retiring to Los Angeles, where he died in 1927.