December 23, 1870

This is Jessie Tarbox Beals (December 23, 1870 to May 30, 1942). She is described as the first woman to be a published photojournalist in the US. Her importance is set out here:

"Jessie Richmond Tarbox Beals was born to John and Marie Bassett Tarbox in Ontario, Canada on December 23, 1870. Her father, a machinist, invented a portable sewing machine, which enabled his family to live comfortably for seven years, until his patent expired. The family split shortly thereafter, and Mrs. Tarbox became a working single mother to her children. After receiving her teaching certification in 1887, Miss Tarbox settled in Greenfield, Massachusetts. Her interest in photography began the following year when she won a camera prize for selling magazine subscriptions. She began supplementing her income by taking portraits of Smith College students, and after attending a Chautauqua Assembly educational seminar, her primary focus became news photography.

"An 1893 trip to photograph the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago changed Jessie Tarbox's life forever. For the next three weeks, she and her ever-present compact Kodak camera photographed the Exposition's many sights and visitors. She also made important contacts with other female photographers such as Gertrude Kasebier. After that experience, her job as a small-town schoolteacher held little appeal. After her marriage to Amherst alumnus Alfred Tennyson Beals in 1897, the couple became a freelance photographic team with Mrs. Beals wielding the camera and her husband serving as her darkroom assistant. When she began earning more money from freelancing than from teaching, she resigned her position in 1900 to become a full-time photographer. The Beals settled in Buffalo, New York, where Mrs. Beals joined the staff of The Buffalo Inquirer, thus becoming the first female news photographer. Anxious to demonstrate her rightful place alongside her male counterparts, she exhibited her strength by using a cumbersome 8x10 format camera weighing 50 pounds. When covering the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in 1904, she photographed such luminaries as Presidents William Howard Taft and Theodore Roosevelt. President Roosevelt was so impressed with Mrs. Beals' work, he provided her with credentials to photograph a reunion of his Rough Riders in 1905."

Here is another sketch with a different take:

"Before you get to masters of any profession, you have to have pioneers. And Jessie Tarbox Beals was America’s first female press photographer. During her life, she moved a lot (she was born in Canada), starting her career in Buffalo, then going to New York and California. All in all, she seemed to love travel and photography, back in the day when it meant a 50 pound camera and puffy ankle length dresses.

"Jessie got her first camera in 1888 and received her first credit for work in September, 1900. One of her first and most audacious exploit was climbing on a bookshelf to photograph a murder trial that was closed to photographers. She was active in self promotion, which got her permission to Louisiana Purchase Exposition in 1904, where she climbed on ladders and into balloons, photographed dignitaries and even stalked president Roosevelt long enough to gain his attention. Jessie also pioneered used of photo series to tell a story (instead of the usual practice of writing a piece and using images to illustrate it).

"She rarely worked as a staff photographer and freelanced a lot, which also meant a lot of travel. She lived in New York and California, and was accepted in bohemian circles. Her pictures were published by the likes of Harper’s Bazaar, Christian Science Monitor and the New York Times. She also appears to have done some cat photography, too, years before Internet.

"Unfortunately, the high life and the Great Depression depleted her funds and, in 1942, Jessie Tarbox Beals died in New York at the age of seventy one."

This picture accompanies the above text: