John Jex Bardwell

American, 1824-1902

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John Jex Bardwell was a daguerreotypist in Marshall, Michigan and Saint Paul, Minnesota in the late 1840s and 1850s before settling in Detroit by 1859. There he organized and was president of the Michigan State Photographic Society in 1866. That year, Bardwell led a charge against James A. Cutting's patent on the Bromide process. In 1854, Cutting secured a patent on the use of potassium of bromide with collodion, despite the combination having been in use by others before that time. Bardwell's testimony was considered essential to defeat an application to renew the onerous patent.Newspapers referred to him as "Prof." Jex Bardwell. He gave public slide lectures showing the evolution of Detroit and vicinity. Accounts of the Photographers' Association of America convention of 1897 indicate that Bardwell was in Chicago and destitute, "old age having overtaken him without means or natural supporters." The Association took up a collection for his benefit in appreciation for his leadership in the bromide patent case years earlier. He died impoverished in Detroit in 1902.