John Plumbe

John Plumbe Jr. (occasionally Plumb; July 13, 1809 – May 29, 1857) was a Welsh-born American entrepreneurial photographer, gallerist, publisher, and an early advocate of an American transcontinental railroad in the mid-19th century. He established a franchise of photography studios in the 1840s in the U.S., with additional branches in Paris and Liverpool. He created a lithographic process for reproducing photographic images, called the "plumbeotype."

Biography

Plumbe was born in Castle Caereinion, Powys, Wales in 1809, to John Plumbe and Frances Margaretta Atherton. The family moved to Philipsburg, Pennsylvania in 1821, and later to Dubuque, Iowa.

Vision for a transcontinental railroad

He began his career as a civil engineer. "He studied civil engineering while still in his late teens and by 1829 was surveying sites for future railroad routes in the southern and eastern portions of the country. About 1836 he relocated to the Wisconsin Territory, where he became and advocate for a transcontinental railroad." Plumbe reasoned that a transcontinental railroad "would hasten the formation of dense settlements throughout the whole extent of the road, advance the sales of the public lands, afford increased facilities to the agricultural, commercial and mining interests of the country...and enable the government to transport troops and munitions of war."

Throughout his life Plumbe would continue to press for the railroad, petitioning Congress and presenting his ideas in various newspapers and other publications for his railroad to be looked at strong.

Daguerreotype galleries, 1840-1847

Plumbe "took up photography in 1840 after seeing the work of an itinerant daguerreotypist in Washington, D.C." —probably the work of John G. Stevenson. Galena, Illinois Frederick, Maryland Salem, Massachusetts New York, New York—Plumbe Daguerrian Gallery, Broadway; Plumbe National Daguerrian Gallery, Chestnut St.

Exhibitions

Plumbe entered his photographic work in several exhibitions, including: Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association, Quincy Hall, Boston, 1844. Plumbe exhibited "35 daguerreotypes, in frames. Peculiarly pleasing, and natural in expression. Silver medal." Fair of the American Institute, NY (1845)

Publishing

In 1846 he founded the National Publishing Company which produced the weekly Popular Magazine (Augustine J.H. Duganne, editor) and other works.

California and Iowa, 1849-1857

Plumbe lived in California from 1849 to 1854. He died in Iowa in 1857, at age 48.

Legacy Examples of Plumbe's work are in the New York Public Library.

In 2024, the National Portrait Gallery obtained a daguerreotype of Dolley Madison, taken about 1846 by Plumbe, that is the earliest known photograph of any U.S. First Lady.

Gallery Works by John Plumbe