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PIC ID: 8173

Ara Abiah Baldwin

American, 1844-1931

Male

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Ara Abiah Baldwin announced the sale of his Proctorsville, Vermont studio in December, 1866 and opened immediately after in Ludlow. In 1869, the Ludlow Vermont Tribune took note of his greenhouse which in addition to "beautiful goldfish, canaries and fountain" held "375 of the most valuable and rare varieties" of flowers. Among them was a "Century Plant" which was periodically reported to have flowered. In May 1871 the building which housed his studio, the post office and a public hall was destroyed by a fire which also claimed a neighboring schoolhouse. He had re-established a studio by July, when that building, too, caught fire. He reopened in September. In June, 1873 he was reported taking stereo views in Montpelier, Springfield and Chester, Vermont. His advertisement in January 1875 consisted of the following poem:"Since the sleighing is so splendid, / and may soon be quite suspended, / Come up beaux and belles together, / Get your pictures this fine weather. / Come good father and good mother, / Come with sister and with brother, / Ere with palsy ye be shaken, / Come to Ara's and be taken! / Whether fleshy, lean or shakey, / Come up white folks, come up darkey; / Both for ugly folks and clever, / Ara takes pictures better'n ever!" In October 1877, he sold his studio to C. E. Vose, citing poor health. The papers also noted a separation from his wife. The divorce was acrimonious, with Baldwin selling all the family furniture, "including his wife's silverware, with her name engraved threon," and the baby's toys and Christmas gifts. She first learned of the auction by reading an advertisement in the paper.He opened a studio in Keene, New Hampshire in May, 1879 and outfitted it with stock and apparatus belonging to S. C. Dustin. He evidently didn't succeed, and the contents were to be auctioned in November when a fire, which started in the studio, burned the whole building down. Baldwin, the paper reported, "barely escaped with his life."He was a photographer in Sigourney, Michigan in 1884, when he returned to Vermont. He had remarried and had a child in February in Brattleboro. Though Ludlow would remain his base for the remainder of his life, his career became largely itenerant.At the end of the year he travelled to New Orleans with a "brother photographer" of Philadelphia on contract to document the World's Industrial and Cotton Centennial Exposition. He was detained en route and forced to pay an outstanding debt of $60. He returned briefly to Ludlow the following May, but found work and left for Worcester, Massachusetts in October, and Saint Johnsbury, Vermont after that.The Ludlow paper on April 29, 1887 noted that he was "in town for a few days, arranging his affairs preparatory to sailing for London, England, where he is to have charge of the photographic department of the American exposition." He returned from abroad in July and was working for Charles A. Moore, who had succeeded the studio of J. O. Phillips. In 1888 he left again to find work in Copenhagen, New York, Littleton, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania. In June, 1889 he bought the Burlington studio of C. P. Hibbard, but he returned to Ludlow within a month, owing to illness. He worked in Scranton, Pennsylvania in 1890, but returned again, "prostrated by paresis of the brain and nervous prostration and now as an additional burden is suffering from la grippe."In 1892 he purchased a studio in Rutland, which he sold the following year to J. W. Kimball, and went to work again for Charles A. Moore, who had opened a branch there.Though he was listed as a photographer on the 1900 census, the Ludlow paper in 1896 calls him "our former photographer." He owned two tenement buildings, and tended to those. The paper recorded regular travels to visit friends and family around the country, as well as his regular bouts of ill health. He died in Ludlow in 1931.

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Ara Abiah Baldwin has 12 locations.

Birth (November 20, 1844)

Ludlow, VT
USA

Active in (1866)

Proctorsville, VT
USA

Active in (1867-1879)

Ludlow, VT
USA

Active in (1879)

Keene, NH
USA

Active in (1884)

Sigourney, MI
USA

Active in (1884)

New Orleans, LA
USA

Active in (1885)

Worcester, MA
USA

Active in (1886-1900)

Ludlow, VT
USA

Active in (1887)

London, England

Active in (1890)

Scranton, PA
USA

Active in (1892-1893)

Rutland, VT
USA

Death (January 10, 1931)

Ludlow, VT
USA