Norman Arthur Forsyth was born in New York State on February 10th, 1869. The Social Security Administration lists his birthplace as St. Lawrence County;[1] his death certificate states that he was born in Syracuse.[2] Neither document lists his parents, and there are no surviving birth or baptism records. For many years all that was known for certain was that he was adopted by Joseph and Lucinda Forsyth of Macomb, New York, who raised him in a devoutly Wesleyan Methodist household, alongside their own five children and a second adopted son.
There are two keys to the identity of Forsyth’s birth family. The first is found in an obituary of Lucinda Forsyth published in 1897, which describes her adopting two boys, “Messrs. Frank Birch and Norman Meredith.”[3] The 1870 US Census lists just one Norman Meredith in entire state of New York, aged 1 year, living with Jane and Mary Meredith in the village of Canton, St. Lawrence[4] – roughly 30 miles from the Forsyth family in Macomb.[5]
The name, age and proximity invite speculation, but there is a second, crucial piece of information to consider. This is found in a notice in the Society pages of The Butte Inter Mountain published in 1904, which stated that a promising 14-year-old artist, Brodie Chestnut of Toronto, was spending a year in the city with “her uncle, N.A. Forsyth.”[6] A search of Ontario’s marriage and birth records establishes that “Brodie Chestnut” was Annie Brodie Chesnut, the granddaughter of Louisa Calcot Meredith of Canton, St. Lawrence – Norman Meredith’s aunt.[7] [8] While confirming the Merediths as Forsyth’s birth family (technically, Brodie was his first cousin once-removed), this brief notice also establishes that he maintained contact with them well into adulthood.
The 1870 census does not list the relationships of those in the household. Despite this, it seems reasonable to infer that the Mary Meredith found in the 1870 census is his mother. Born in St. Lawrence in 1853, Mary would have been 15 or 16 when he was born, and his matronymic surname indicates that the birth was out of wedlock.
According to an obituary of Joseph Forsyth published in 1922, Norman was adopted at the age of 5,[9] and his new family left New York for a homestead in Willow Creek, Nebraska in 1879.
It was also during this period that Forsyth first encountered stereography:
“My introduction to stereoscopic views was when I was about ten years old. I heard people telling about the wonderful things they had seen at the Centennial Exposition at Philadelphia. Their stories did not mean anything to me until a lady let me see her stereoscopic views of the great Exposition through a stereoscope. After that when I heard their stories I felt like I had been there and seen it with my two eyes.”[10]
It was at Willow Creek that Forsyth first met Wilber A. Squires and his wife Eva, living on a neighboring homestead.[11] The Squires family would become one of the few constant presences in his long life, their children his closest friends, their grandchildren the unofficial keepers of his memory.
In the 1949 Dillon Tribune interview, Wilber G. Squires said of Forsyth: “He was always so gentle and kind as a boy that as he grew up, we thought he would make a fine minister.”[12] This fleeting description is one of the few portraits we have of Forsyth as a youth, but even in its brevity we see a young man apparently destined for the church. It was with this goal that at the age of 22 Forsyth left behind his “…life in the saddle with only cattle and coyotes for companions”[13] and enrolled at the Methodist Wesleyan Academy in Lincoln, Nebraska.[14]
The Wesleyan Academy was established in 1887, offering formal schooling to students with previously limited access to educational resources. It provided “…an excellent preparation for those who desire to fit themselves for the College of Liberal Arts.”[15] This was the path Forsyth would follow over the next decade, receiving his diploma from the Academy in 1896 as a prerequisite to enrolling at Wesleyan University in fall of the same year.[16]
The ten years Forsyth spent in Lincoln are the most comprehensively documented of his life, thanks to college catalogues, registers and newspapers. These documents reveal a young man struggling to reconcile expectation and vocation, preparing for his ordainment, but increasingly preoccupied by photography. Alongside his studies he served for several years as the Chairman of the Missionary Committee of the YMCA,[17] and became a member (and eventually President) of the Theophanian Society,[18] “…a Theological society for students preparing for Christian work.”[19]
In addition to his academic and religious pursuits, Forsyth undertook a variety of jobs to finance his studies. Initially these were mostly agricultural. His summers were spent working on the Squires farm in Willow Creek,[20] and in 1894 he was listed as a laborer on the farm campus of the neighboring University of Nebraska.[21] It was here at the State University the following spring that he met a student named Ward Hildreth, who recruited him as a salesman for the James M. Davis View Company.[22]
In 1895 stereography was approaching its peak in popularity. Originally developed in Europe in the 1830s, it became fashionable in North America after Oliver Wendell Holmes’s invention of the hand-held stereoscope in 1859. With advances in the large-scale production of views and viewers, stereoscopes were an increasingly common sight in homes, schools and libraries across the country. The James M. Davis company was one of dozens producing stereographs for sale to both individuals and institutions. These businesses relied heavily on door-to-door canvassers, and recruited primarily from college campuses, where erudite young gentlemen in need of money were in plentiful supply.
By the end of his first summer as a canvasser, Forsyth, who had arrived at Wesleyan Academy with “…sixty dollars in his pocket, most of which he spent in a few weeks”[23] now “…had plenty of money and some to loan to other poor students.”[24] It was at this time that his own interest in photography began to take root, facilitated by his newfound financial stability. Wilber G. Squires recalled Forsyth working his way through college by commissioning portraits,[25] and Wesleyan University’s 1901 student annual referred to him as “Chief Photographer to the Chancellor”.[26]
Two brief notices from 1897 clearly illustrate the different paths Forsyth might have taken upon graduation. On January 31st The Nebraska State Journal announced a service at the Grace Methodist Church:
“The services will be conducted by N.A. Forsythe [sic], who will talk on the subject of missionary work in Africa. Mr. Forsythe is preparing to go to this dark continent as a missionary.”[27]
Then in August, the Lincoln Evening News reported on an exhibit at the State University:
“The stereoscopic views on exhibition at the assembly by N.A. Forsyth attracted a good share of attention.”[28]
In February 1898 Forsyth attended the Volunteer Mission Convention in Cleveland, Ohio,[29] and on his return he delivered a report on the conference to an ecumenical gathering at St. Paul’s Methodist Episcopal Church in Lincoln.[30] Though ultimately an affirmation of his faith and his belief in the missionary movement, the title of his lecture – “The Inadequacy of the Christian Religion” – suggests he was at least questioning his calling.
On August 28th he delivered another address on missionary work to the Methodist Episcopal Church in Greeley, Nebraska:
“Rev. N.A. Forsyth, of the Wesleyan University, will preach in the M.E. church next Sunday morning and deliver an address on missions in the evening.”[31]
This particular notice is significant as it supports Del Phillips’ assertion, based on his conversations with Genevieve Squires-Adair, that Forsyth was in fact an ordained minister, albeit a minister who only ever preached one sermon.[32] Once again, the choices facing Forsyth in 1898 stand in stark contrast. That spring he had been approached by a recruiting agent from Underwood & Underwood and offered a position as sales representative for Nebraska.[33] He accepted, heralding the start of a 23-year relationship with the company.
Forsyth spent the final weeks of 1898 in Pierce County, staying with family friends Albion H. Ricker and his wife Jessie, who owned a homestead near Willow Creek.[34] The following summer he accompanied the Rickers on what would prove to be a life-changing three month excursion to Yellowstone National Park.[35] For Forsyth, enthralled by Yellowstone, the long-term significance of this visit cannot be overstated.
It was also during this journey that he first visited Butte. Among his earliest views of the city is one that can be dated precisely. On October 23rd, 1899, the First Montana Regiment returned to Butte from the Spanish-American War, and Forsyth was there among the “Kodac [sic] and camera fiends”[36] to capture the moment. It is one of at least a dozen known stereographs that appear to have been taken on visits to Butte between 1899 and 1901, while Forsyth was still a student at Lincoln. They are markedly different from his later views. In time, Forsyth would adopt a simple yet distinctive style, square-cropped stereo images mounted on plain gray card, a brief descriptive caption, and his name and address stamped on the reverse. These early views were mounted on tan card, with a much larger typeface, and the quality of the actual photographs is best described as variable – the work of a man still learning his craft.
But among them are two of his best-known Butte images, “Cousin Jack Race Horses” and “Young Prospectors, Butte”. In the former a young girl holds the leashes of four greyhounds, while a toddler stares intently into the camera lens; in the latter, a group of very young children innocently tunnel their way through a pile of mine tailings. Another of these early views, “800 Feet Under Butte”, was possibly his first attempt to capture miners at work, an attempt that even the most generous viewer would have to describe as a failure. Fortunately, it was a subject to which he would return many times in the following decade.
Forsyth was again in Butte in 1900, this time in his capacity as Chairman of the Missionary Committee of the YMCA. That June, The Anaconda Standard reported:
“Rev. G.L. Hosford of Lincoln, Neb., Western manager of the mission for the India famine relief, and N.A. Forsyth, Montana state commissioner for the relief fund, arrived in Butte yesterday and took preliminary steps toward raising Montana’s contribution for the fund. Mr. Hosford will return at once to Nebraska, while Mr. Forsyth will remain in Butte and take charge of the Montana relief work.”[37]
It would be his last significant work as a missionary. In December 1900 he displayed some of his earliest Yellowstone stereoviews at Wesleyan University Library,[38] and a week before his graduation he hosted his final discussion as President of the Theophanian Society. Titled “Among Our Nation’s Wonders”,[39] it could also be interpreted as a statement of intent. A month earlier he had been contacted by the Shaw & Powell Camping Company of Livingston, and offered a position as a tour guide and coach driver at Yellowstone. His reaction was recorded by a fellow student:
“N. A. Forsyth gave the writer such a poke in the back the other day that it was feared the periphery of the nerves controlling his scratch hand would be paralyzed. All this in consequence of having received a notification that he had been selected to drive a coach and four in the Yellowstone next summer.”[40]
Any lingering plans to pursue a life in the ministry were forgotten. Forsyth graduated from Wesleyan University with a Bachelor of Science degree in June 1901.[41] He briefly returned to Willow Creek to visit with family and friends, and on June 10th he left for Yellowstone.[42]
Part 3: Yellowstone and Butte (1901-1907).
[1] U.S Social Security Applications and Claims Index, 1936-2007
[2] State of Montana, Montana Death Index, 1868-2015
[3] “Obituary. Lucy E. Forsyth,” Pierce County Leader, Pierce, (NE), Jan. 15, 1897
[4] United States Federal Census: Canton, Saint Lawrence, New York, Sep. 7, 1870
[5] United States Federal Census: Macomb, Saint Lawrence, New York, Jun. 23, 1870
[6] “Society Personals,” The Butte Inter Mountain, Butte, (MT), Jun. 25, 1904
[7] Canada, Ontario, County Marriage Registers 1801- 1944
[8] Canada, Ontario Births, 1869-1912
[9] “Old Soldier Answers the Final Roll Call,” Pierce County Call, Pierce, (NE), Nov. 3, 1922
[10] Letter from Forsyth to Mr. Hamilton, Jul. 30, 1949
[11] Nebraska State Census, Willow Creek, Pierce, Jun. 10, 1885
[12] “Chats with Your Editor,” The Dillon Daily Tribune, Dillon, (MT), Dec. 19, 1949
[13] The Nebraska Wesleyan, Lincoln, (NE), Jun. 1, 1901
[14] Pierce County Call, Pierce, (NE), Sep. 11, 1891
[15] Nebraska Wesleyan University Ninth Annual Catalogue, 1896-1897, Lincoln, (NE), 1897
[16] Pierce County Call, Pierce, (NE), Sep. 18, 1896
[17] The Nebraska Wesleyan, Lincoln, (NE), Jun. 1, 1901
[18] The Nebraska Wesleyan, Lincoln, (NE), Jun. 1, 1901
[19] Nebraska Wesleyan University Third Catalogue, 1891-1892, Lincoln, (NE), 1892
[20] Norman Forsyth: The Man and his Legacy, Del Phillips, 1991
[21] Twelfth Biennial Report of the Board of Regents to the Governor, The University of Nebraska, Lincoln, (NE), 1894
[22] Letter from Forsyth to Mr. Hamilton, Jul. 30, 1949
[23] The Nebraska Wesleyan, Lincoln, (NE), Jun. 1, 1901
[24] Letter from Forsyth to Mr. Hamilton, Jul. 30, 1949
[25] “Chats with Your Editor,” The Dillon Daily Tribune, Dillon, (MT), Dec. 19, 1949
[26] The Sunflower, Lincoln, (NE), 1901
[27] “Among the Churches,” Nebraska State Journal, Lincoln, (NE), Jan. 31, 1897
[28] “University Place,” The Evening News, Lincoln, (NE), Aug. 11, 1897
[29] “Volunteer Missionaries,” Nebraska State Journal, Lincoln, (NE), Feb. 22, 1898
[30] “Earnest Young Christians,” Nebraska State Journal, Lincoln, (NE), Mar. 12, 1898
[31] “Local Matter,” Leader-Independent, Greeley, (NE), Aug. 25, 1898
[32] Norman Forsyth: The Man and his Legacy, Del Phillips, 1991
[33] Letter from Forsyth to Mr. Hamilton, Jul. 30, 1949
[34] Pierce County Call, Pierce, (NE), Dec. 30, 1898
[35] Pierce County Call, Pierce, (NE), Jul. 14, 1899
[36] “The Welcome A Royal One,” The Butte Miner, Butte, (MT), Oct. 24, 1899
[37] “To Help the Starving,” The Anaconda Standard, Butte, (MT), Jun. 14, 1900
[38] The Nebraska Wesleyan, Lincoln, (NE), Dec. 15, 1900
[39] “Theophanian Session,” The Lincoln Evening News, Lincoln, (NE), May. 30, 1901
[40] The Nebraska Wesleyan, Lincoln, (NE), Apr. 11, 1901
[41] “Diplomas,” The Lincoln Evening News, Lincoln, (NE), Jun. 6, 1901
[42] Pierce County Leader, Pierce, (NE), Jun. 7, 1901