The Getty Museum has a record of C.E. Kelsey as an American photographer active in the 1910s. Mentions of C. E. Kelsey appear in a number of photography journals during this decade. I’ve long wondered whether this could be “our” C. E. Kelsey, even though I cannot imagine how Kelsey could have found time to pursue serious photography in those years.
Kelsey was an early adopter of new technologies, including photography. He attended the Janesville Academy of Telegraphy in Wisconsin (probably the school operated by Richard Valentine) and worked as a telegrapher for a railroad at a young age. The telegraph may have been the first invention to capture his fancy, and he never forgot it. In one of his surviving notebooks from the 1880s Kelsey recorded notes in Morse code, and much later he used it to communicate with his son-in-law, a radio engineer. His first exposure to Morse code may have occurred while working as a telegram messenger boy or by reading one of many books on telegraphy. The 1870s was the heyday of the telegraph, before the telephone entered the scene and rapidly gained acceptance. According to Tom Standage’s The Victorian Internet: The Remarkable Story of the Telegraph and the Nineteenth Century’s Online Pioneers, telegraphers were skilled and well paid information workers at technology’s leading edge, though a telegraphy post in Kelsey’s home of Montello (Wisconsin) was perhaps relatively quiet compared to such jobs in big cities.
Building on his boyhood hobby of photography, Kelsey served as a photographer for landscape artist Henry Chapman Ford and other artists touring California missions in 1888. This was probably his first visit to California. Kelsey’s camera, glass plates, prints, and several notebooks were still with the family a decade ago. One notebook entry contains his notes for preparing a photographic emulsion. “Photographer” seems to have been one of his lifelong roles, so in many family photographs he is behind the camera rather than in the picture. This makes his image even more elusive.
According to family stories, Kelsey bought the first vacuum cleaner in San Jose and was the third person to own a car–a 1907 Kissel–in that city. It was not long after Kelsey was appointed by the government to purchase rancheria lands that he bought his first car. This is evident from his notebooks, where his expenses change from fares to mileage. A heading on one page, “Odometer,” bears an initial entry of June 28–presumably 1907–with the mileage noted as 37.8.
As it turns out, it is likely that the Getty’s C. E. Kelsey is a different person than “our” C. E. Kelsey. My conclusion is based on an entry I found in The Photo-Miniature: A Magazine of Photographic Information, edited by John A. Tennant, which is pictured above. The entry (May 1915, volume XII, number 137, page 241) indicates that C. E. Kelsey was a member of the Buffalo (New York) Camera Club in 1915. Because “our” Kelsey was living in California at this time, it would appear that these are two different people.