Picturing the Past

South Main Street
White River Junction, VT

George Fellows was a local photographer who was most prolific in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He owned at least three studios in the Upper Valley area - one in Royalton, VT, another in White River Junction, VT and a third in Claremont, NH. The studio in White River Junction (pictured in the photograph of South Main Street) operated until his death in 1916. Not much is known about Fellows' origins, though it is thought that he may have originally been from Charlestown, New Hampshire.

Gulf Bridge
Queechee, VT

Rauner Library holds a significant collection of over a thousand early twentieth-century negatives taken by Fellows of the surrounding area. Most of these are dry gelatin glass plates, though a small number are on celluloid. Towns represented in the collection include Canaan, Enfield, Lyme, Orford and West Lebanon in New Hampshire and Ascutney, Fairlee, Norwich, Royalton, Sharon, Thetford, Woodstock and White River Junction in Vermont. The images are typically labeled by place name or building and occasionally include a specific date. They provide a rich visual record of this small section of New England at the turn of the last century.

Mascoma Lake
Enfield, NH

Ask for Iconography 1513.  While the glass plate negatives are available for viewing, they are extremely fragile and we encourage patrons to ask for the modern (and much less fragile) study prints for extensive study and image selection.