1889 James Meddaugh Albumen Cabinet Card Photograph of a Lakota Chief

James Edward Meddaugh (October 19, 1861 - October 26, 1926) was an American photographer. Born in Caroline, New York, Meddaugh was an itinerant photographer who spent time in the Dakotas, Wyoming, Nebraska, and California. At some point (likely in the late 1880s), Meddaugh lived in Rushville, Nebraska, and worked as a photographer. Several of his surviving photographs are mounted on cabinet cards that read 'J.E. Meddaugh Photographer, Rushville, Neb.'. While living in Rushville, Meddaugh took a series of photographs at the Pine Ridge Reservation, including the only known photographs of the Lakota in the Ghost Dance. One source indicates that the studio in Rushville was established in the late 1880s. In 1892, Meddaugh lived in Lead, South Dakota, and published a 'Souvenir of Lead Black Hills Metropolis', a view book consisting of 23 views of what was then the largest settlement in the Black Hills. According to marriage records, Meddaugh lived in Lawrence County, South Dakota, in 1891 when he married Serena Redlon (an 18-year-old from Sheridan County, Nebraska). Both James and Serena appear in the 1900 U.S. Census in and are living in Lead City, South Dakota, where James is working as a photographer. (Lead City is in Lawrence County, suggesting that Meddaugh may have lived in Lead City when he married Serena.) At that point, they had two children, James (b. 1892) and Hazel (b. 1893). Meddaugh went west to photograph the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. In 1909, he photographed the Great White Fleet. By the 1910 Census, he and his family were living in Santa Cruz, California. He died in Stockton, California, on October 26, 1926. Per one account, Meddaugh died a few days after his car went over a cliff in the San Andreas area of California. More by this mapmaker...