1913 Set of 4 Original One-of-a-Kind (OOAK) Real Sepia Photos of THOMAS JEFFERSON Statue Unveiling in St. Louis, Missouri, by his descendent, Miss NATALIE NORTON. The ceremony was officiated by St. Louis Mayor DAVID R. FRANCIS, who is standing at the podium. In 1904, Francis was president of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Company World's Fair.
Dimensions: 5 in. x 3½ in.
Taken / shot by famous photojournalist, Robert Froelich.
very good condition - watermarks only added to digital scans uploaded to this listing. Originals have no watermarks.
These photos are museum quality and do not exist in a museum - we checked - they are uniquely direct from the photographer's son's private collection of his father's estate.
Dedication Ceremony
Following a parade that started at 1pm and was so long took 80-minutes to pass and a luncheon presented by the directors who organized the 1904 World's Fair, at about 3pm on April 30, 1913, Miss Natalie Norton unveiled the statue of Thomas Jefferson with Mayor and Governor officiating.
Norton, a resident of Elsberry, Missouri, in 1913 was the daughter of Porter E. Norton of Lincoln County and a descendent of Thomas Jefferson through the Randolph and Bankhead families. For the unveiling ceremony, Norton wore a white gown and held a boquet of pink flowers.
She was selected a few days prior by a planning committee and arrived in St. Louis by train on April 29, 1913 along with a Joint Congressional Delegation which included Senators Martine and Hughes of New Jersey, Senator Jones of Washington, and Senator Kenyon of Iowa. Also on the 5:25 train were Congressmen Linthleum of Maryland, White of Ohio, Cullop of Indiana, Kahn of California, Prouty of Iowa, and Bartholdt and Dyer of St. Louis.
Russell Froelich, Sr. (1890–1958) was a pioneer of both early aviation and aerial photography who took thousands of lasting images of the St. Louis region for the city’s newspaper outlets from 1911 to the 1950s, helped the war effort in WWI with aerial mapping, was a color photography innovator and even invented a monoplane.
The monoplane Froelich designed and built in 1911 pioneered the fixed-wing aircraft configuration with a single mainplane (in contrast to biplanes of the era) which became the most common structure of aircraft after the 1930s. In his twenties, he began both designing and helping to build airplanes with early local flyers, such as Tom Benoist of the Benoist Aircraft Company, leading to the role as official photographer for the manufacturer.
American entry into WWI led Froelich to put his talents and skills to wartime use. He began taking aerial photographs from wing-mounted cameras that he improvised to fit given situations and flight conditions, helping the US Army Signal Corps develop terrain maps of Europe.
After the War, Froelich worked as a beat photographer for St. Louis newspapers, including the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, and the St. Louis Star. He eventually managed the photography team which gave him access to a wide range of subject matter and the ability to experiment with action photography and the evolution of color techniques
*OOAK = One of a Kind