by Shannon Butler
While going through and transcribing the Vail Photography studio ledgers, it’s fun to put names to faces. The name Charles Barnes has come up several times in the process and it turns out that there were actually two different men with that same name living here in Poughkeepsie, both born about the same time. One of these men had a wife and kids, the other had a beloved dog and enjoyed showing off his dog a bit like some of us obsessed pet owners today.
At first, it was tricky to determine which of these Barnes was which and who actually owned the dog? Both were born in 1847 and both lived here in Poughkeepsie. One owned a furniture store on Main Street for many years while the other studied at Rutgers. One had a fabulous house designed by Arnout Cannon on Church street while the other lived with his brothers George and Maurice in a house on Cannon Street. After some digging I discovered that the first image on the right is Charles Haven Barnes and his wife Marianna. This Charles is the one who owned the furniture store on Main street and had two children, Gilbert and Helen. Helen would go on to graduate from Vassar College. The lovely house that was built on Church street for Charles and his family still stands today. This Charles lost his wife in 1899 and his son in 1915, but he managed to do well in life and died in 1930.
Our second Charles Barnes can be seen in the next two images. He was likewise born in 1847 and lived not too far from the first Charles, at number 16 Cannon Street. This Charles went off to study engineering at Rutgers and worked for the Pennsylvania Railroad before coming back to Poughkeepsie to work on various projects here. He stopped by the Vail Studios several times for photographs of himself, placing many orders for prints, he appears to have been friends with Alonzo Vail (one of the owners). With no wife and children to focus on (or spend money on) Charles clearly spent money on his beloved pup Fritz and stopped by the studio several times to get photos made of his baby (and Fritz clearly loves posing for the camera).
The price for photos at Vail studios depended on what type you wanted and whether you wanted them framed, but typically a dozen Cabinet Cards (essentially photos on hard cardboard matting) would set you back $5 to $7. In today’s money that would be around $140. So for Charles to bring his dog in for 5 different sittings and several orders of prints were made, that would be similar to any of us commissioning an artist to paint a portrait of our pets and include a fancy frame today! But sadly for this dog lover, he would not live very long. The papers show that he became ill while visiting Bermuda in April of 1891 and he returned home and died a few weeks later on May 13th. The Sunday Courier wrote, “His death cast a gloom of sorrow and regret over a large circle of friends who were near to him because of his quiet, courteous, frank, upright, and reliable manner.” That sounds nice, but let’s face it, I’d hang out with him just to pet his adorable dog.
