|
 The Women's Legacy Project of Snohomish
County, Washington seeks to honor our foremothers by recording and
sharing their personal histories, their ability to adapt to the forces
of change and their constant vigilance as stewards of the
diverse cultures of our society.
www.snohomishwomenslegacy.org |
WLP Story Number 1 ~
Alice and Clara Rigby
~ Independent Photographers in an Age of Few Women Owned Businesses.
by Margaret Riddle
Iowa-born Alice and Clara Rigby
arrived in Everett, Washington at the dawning of the 20th
century and did what few other women of their time dared to
try: they owned and operated a professional photo
studio. From 1905 to 1915, the Rigby and Rigby Photo Shop
successfully competed with prominent local photographers J. D. Myers
and Bert Brush, as well as half a dozen smaller firms, and found a
niche for themselves in a profession dominated by men. |
| The Rigby sisters were
part of a growing number of women in the early 1900s who sought social
and economic independence, and the West was fertile territory for this
progressive kind of thinking. Issues of the day included the
rights of working women and, more significantly, a woman’s right to
vote. By 1910 Washington State would grant women suffrage. |
| But the need for
independence had more immediate and personal roots for Alice and
Clara. As the result of an unhappy marriage, their mother,
Delia, encouraged her daughters to seek professions, not
husbands. And, in like manner, Delia’s sister, Emma
Sarepta Yule, was a highly successful and independent
lady. Arriving at the Everett town site in 1891, Emma Yule
became Everett’s first school teacher. When other teachers
were hired, Emma became Principal. From 1897 to 1900, she
served as Everett’s Superintendent of Schools. In 1900, Emma
Yule left Everett to teach in Alaska. Showing such
independence, intelligence and ability, Emma was likely a significant
role model for her young nieces. |
Above:
Clara Rigby
|
The Rigby sisters
chose professions that were considered acceptable for women of their
time. Alice became a teacher, and Clara pursued
photography. In Washington State, female teachers could not
be married, a requirement that continued until after World War
II. And photography was, as the Kodak Company advertised at
the turn of the century, an appropriate occupation for women.
It was considered a proper artistic endeavor, and work could be done in
or near the home. Photography studios routinely employed
women in this area, athough most worked as silent partners in the
darkroom or as retouchers, their identities invisible behind a male
studio name.
Rigby family stories recall that Delia came to Everett with daughters
Clara and Alice at the turn of the century, but city directories
indicate otherwise. Alice seems to have come to Everett
first, arriving alone in 1900. She is listed that year as
teaching at Lincoln School, in the elementary grades, and living with
Aunt Emma Yule at Everett’s elegant Monte Cristo Hotel. That
year, however, Ms.Yule became involved in a dispute with the school
district over her pay and departed to teach in Alaska.
Clara began her career working
as a retoucher in 1892 for the J. C. Wilson Studios in Cherokee, Iowa,
moving next to Colorado where she did similar work for various
studios. In 1904, she and her mother came to
Everett. Photographer Loren Seely hired Clara as his
retoucher. One year later, she bought the Seely studio,
acquiring both his studio location and negative collection.
Alice quit teaching to work with Clara, and for nearly ten years, the
Rigby sisters operated the business with considerable success. |
|
| Rigby family members say
that the sisters called their studio Rigby and Rigby in an attempt to
conceal the fact that they were women, but Clara and Alice also found
ways to capitalize on the pluses of their gender. The Rigbys
advertised as “Portraitists” who specialized in baby pictures, and it
can be imagined that Alice drew on her teaching experience to aid in
photographing the young. |
| By 1900, times were
changing economically for the region. With the severe
depression years of the 1890s now in its past, the Pacific Northwest
was once again feeling prosperous and optimistic, and Everett gained
its share of new arrivals, many of them immigrants, seeking to better
their lives in a new place. In the century’s first decade,
Everett’s population tripled. |
| Everett now had families,
and families had “Kodaks”. By 1900, photographic advances and
cheaper prices made it possible for amateurs to take their own
pictures. Working with either a small glass-plate camera or a
new popular roll film model known as the postcard Kodak 3A, they
photographed their families, their homes and businesses, as well as
activities on their city streets. They also recorded heavy snowfalls
and floods and documented their vacations and trips abroad. |
| Often poor exposed and
usually of poor composition, these photographs were, nevertheless,
priceless ways of sharing experiences with family and friends miles
away. Studios processed and duplicated these amateur views,
often printing them as postcards, which could be mailed. Over
the years, these amateur postcard images have become historical
treasures because they often documented events of everyday life in a
way that studio views do not. |
Film processing
offered steady work, and the Rigbys gained their share of this
business. However more money was being made in portraiture
and commercial photography. Professional portraits were
highly prized. Photographed with balanced lighting, set
against a studio background and retouched to make its subjects look
their best, the professional portrait was considered a work of art, and
professional photographers were held in high regard.
Competition was keen, and to prosper in the work, a practitioner needed
to be good at business as well as art. The Rigby sisters
skillfully balanced both and survived in competition with other
excellent photographers. The Rigbys even opened additional
studios in Monroe, Snohomish and Arlington, and commuted by train
between towns.
In 1913 they temporarily closed their studios to visit Japan.
Scrapbooks assembled by the sisters document their trip. Upon returning
to Everett, the Rigbys relocated their studio at 2802 Colby.
But the joyful years were behind them. Alice soon was
diagnosed with cancer and died at 44 years of age. Clara
continued the business for only a few months after Alice’s death, then
closed the studio for good. |
Above: Alice Rigby
|
|
| The Rigby negatives were
stored for many years and then dispersed, some finding their way into
the files of Lee Juleen, which are now housed at the Everett Public
Library. Few of their photos remain. Only a small
number of negatives and postcards in the Everett Public Library are
easily attributed to them. What the Rigby family has retained
are priceless photos that Clara and Alice took of each other, showing
the fine quality of their portraiture. |
| In the 1920s Clara
married James Casperson, an employee of the Everett Pulp and Paper
Company. The couple moved to California where they grew and
marketed nuts. Clara eventually returned to live in
Everett. She died August 27, 1953. |
| Rigby descendants speak
of Alice as the quieter and gentler sister, but while Clara was a stern
and imposing figure to her relatives, it is Clara they remember, since
she lived long enough to be a presence in their lives. What
made the sisters different from other Snohomish County women
working in photography at that time? Were the Rigbys wealthy
enough to be able to buy a photo studio while the average retoucher was
not? “No,” the family says, “they didn’t have
money.” Perhaps just the skill, the drive and the
dream. And that, the sisters certainly had. |
Sources: Donald
Rigby, an oral history interview circa 1980 by Margaret Riddle and
David Dilgard; Iris Broad, an oral history interview, August 20, 2001,
by Margaret Riddle;
Polk's city directories for Everett; Washington, 1900 to
1915. © 2006 Margaret Riddle;
Previously Published in Snohomish County: An Illustrated
History Kelcema Press, 2005. |