Grafton Tyler Brown (February 1841 – March 2, 1918) was an American painter, lithographer, viewmaker, and cartographer active in California and the Pacific northwest. Brown was one of the few African American lithographers and viewmakers active in the 19th century. He was born in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania and was the son of free blacks involved with the abolitionist movement. He studied printing in Philadelphia from 14 years of age, mastering lithography by the time he reached his maturity. Brown relocated to San Francisco in 1858, when he was just seventeen, and just prior to the outbreak of the American Civil War (1861 - 1865). He initially took work as a steward at the St. George Hotel in Sacramento, but quickly earned a reputation as an excellent artist. Meanwhile in 1850 San Francisco, the viewmakers, Charles C. Kuchel (1820 - 1865) and his artist Emil Dresel, operating as 'Kuchel and Diesel', split ways. Dresel, the artist, moved to Sonoma to open a vineyard. Kuchel needed a new artist and had heard of Grafton Brown through his connections. Grafton accepted the position and moved to San Francisco, where he worked with Kuchel from 1861 to 1865. When Kuchel died in 1865, Grafton purchased the business. Curiously, while he appears in Sacramento directories as 'colored', in San Francisco there is no such designation, later, in Minnesota census records, he is recorded as 'white'. In fact, being very light skinned, he could pass as either race depending on the viewer's expectations. Literature of the period suggests that his true ethnicity was an open secret that most chose to willfully ignore in the face Brown's competence and business acumen. Brown was a lithographer, while most of his San Francisco competitors were letterpress printers. The versatility of lithography gave him a natural advantage in terms of both price and versatility over letterpress. Among his earliest work are advertisements for such prominent firms as Levi Strauss. By 1870 he had a staff of 4, expanding to 8 in 1880. Some of his best customers were mining companies, who issued decorative stock certificates printed by Brown. Through these, he became involved with producing bird's-eye views to promote mining boomtowns. He issued the first and second views of Virginia City, as well as the first and only view of Silver City, Idaho Territory. He also issued a wealth of real-estate maps, primarily focused on Oakland, California. By the 1880s, the silver loads and Oakland real estate business began to decline and, along with it, Brown's business. In 1882, he sold his company and relocated to Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, to work with Amos Bowman in the national Geological Survey. He worked with the survey as a draftsman and landscape artist. Leveraging his history of view making, many of Brown's landscapes were based upon photographs he took. In 1884 he returned to the United States and settled in Portland, Oregon, where he worked as a landscape painter. Brown moved again in 1893, this time to Saint Paul, Minnesota, where he once again worked as a draughtsman, this time for the United States Army Corps of Engineers, as well as for the city of St. Paul. In the 1890s, he worked extensively in Yellowstone, producing photographs, paintings, and views. Brown remained in Minnesota until his death in 1918. More by this mapmaker...

Philip Frederick Castleman (May 17, 1827 - March 24, 1913) was an American daguerreotype photographer active in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Castleman was born in Hodgenville, Kentucky, where he received a very basic frontier education. At some point, showing promise, he transitioned to teaching and secured a position in Bacon Creek, Kentucky. When gold was discovered at Sutter's Mill, he traveled west with other 49ers - departing on May 3,1849 in a cross-country caravan under the leadership of C. W. Churchill. Of the eighteen men accompanying him, only eleven made it to California. After a few failed attempts at mining at Bidwell's Bar, on the Feather River, Castleman took a position in Sacramento as a baker's assistant. After about half a year, he turned again to mining, working the Redding Diggings, but taking ill, sold his claims. He relocated to Eugene, Oregon in 1851, using his small gold-rush earnings to build a sawmill on Bear Creek, the first such in southern Oregon. Two years later, in 1853, he sold the first mill and in partnership with Milton Lindley built a new mill at Phoenix, on the Rogue River. With some financial security, Castleman decided to return east by ship, crossing the isthmus at Nicaragua. While in New York, he discovered daguerreotyping, with which he became enamored. Toting a full daguerreotyping and developing setup, Castleman returned to the west coast, this time via Panama. He was one of the first two photographers on the west coast, pioneering the art in Northern California and Southern Oregon. Around this time, he fought and was wounded in the Indian Wars along the Rogue River. He was sent to Eugene to recover from this war wounds. In 1855, after the Indian War, he sold his mill interests and began running pack-trains from the Willamette Valley to mining camps in southern Oregon. By 1857, he established livery stables in Oregon, and later in Walla Walla. Between 1862 and 1867, Castleman alternated between running supply caravans to mines in Oregon and Idaho Territory and doing professional photography 'of all kinds'. Often, Castleman carried his photographic equipment with him while on supply missions, recording some of the most important and ephemeral mining booms in American history. During this time, he developed a lucrative partnership with the African American San Francisco lithographer Grafton T. Brown (1841 - 1918), wherein Brown would create lithographic city views from Castleman's photographs. The views are among the earliest and most important views of important mining sites and boomtowns in the Pacific Northwest. Some of these views include Silver City, Walla Walla, Boise, and Portland, among others. He relocated to Portland in 1878, where remained until 1908, when he moved to Berkeley, California. He died in San Francisco in 1913. Learn More...