Details

Collection Summary
Collection: 1952 - Frank Bennett Fiske
Folder: 0000
Item: 03203
Title: Stephen Truman Fansler
Date: 1892
Inscription/Marks: [negative on emulsion side in pencil] Fansler Photographer. [biography-North Dakota Visual Artist Archives ND Council on the Arts] Stephen Truman Fansler was born December 04, 1866 to John Henry and Jemima Parsons Fansler of Leadmine, West Virginia. He had five brothers and two sisters. Fansler was a schoolteacher and attended the Missouri School of Business in Cincinnati, Ohio before joining Company D of the 8th Cavalry on October 18, 1890. A sharpshooter, he was assigned to Fort Yates, a military post on the Standing Rock Indian Reservation that straddles the border between North and South Dakota. He became the post photogrpher upon his honorable discharge in 1892 and opened a studio with Clarence Fuller, another local photographer. In addition to making portraits of post officers and soldiers, Fansler made several photographs of the Dakotah Sioux and other American Indians from the area. It was during this time that Fansler took on a young apprentice named Frank Bennett Fiske. Fiske was the son of the post's civilian wagon master and had taken an interest in both photography and Ameerican Indian culture at a young age. Fansler helped develop, so to speak, Fiske's budding phtoography skills and trained him in common techniques of the day including glass-plate negatives and solar printing processes. In 1900, Fansler's wife died an dhe moved back to West Virginia where his parents could help raise his young baby daughter. He opened a studio and gallery in nearby Davis, which he operated until his daughter died a shortime later. He soon left West Virginia and headed west, making it as far as Yellowstone National Park. (Rumor has it that he rode a bicycle over the Rocky Mountains.) He made several photographs of homesteading families and American Indians. Eventually, he worked his way back east to Wisconsin wehre he met Maude Evelyn Newhart, who he married on New Year's Day, 1902. They had two daughters (Ferne and Althea) before he established a studio in Plum City, Wisonsin, where a third daughter (Virginia) was born. A wanderer at heart, Fansler moved his family to Mineral Springs, Georgia where they opened a resort and had another daughter. The business was ultimately unsuccessful and the family again moved, this time to Kissimmee, Florida. Fansler farmed and later owned an orange grove. A fifth daughter (Mable) was born. After his wife died in 1940, Fansler retired to a life of fishing and serving as president of the local Liars Club, which he helped organize. He died in July 26, 1953 and is buried in Tampa, Florida. --Ben Nemoff. Source: Richardson, Mable (Fansler's daughter). Letters written to the State Historical Society of North Dakota. Tallahassee, Florida. April 13, 1987, April 27, 1987, May 28, 1987.
Summary: Half-length studio portrait of Stephen Truman Fansler from waist upwards with a plain backdrop. He is wearing a dark coat, white tuxedo shirt, dark vest and white tie with the ends tucked into his shirt. His hair is parted on the photo right side and swept back from his face. He has a handlbar mustache and is looking up to photo left. His face has been lit using one high light providing Rembrandt lighting.
Red ID: PH_I_27431 Image ID: 136278 Image Notes: 1952-03203

Collection: 1952 Digitized Images from Collection
Title: Frank Bennett Fiske
Date: 1880-1952

Summary: Includes prints and negatives of portraits, agriculture, education, wildlife, hunting, Frank Fiske studio portraits, and some views of South Dakota. Fiske’s Native American photographs include portraits, Indian gatherings and ceremonies, boarding schools, Indian houses and dwellings, and Native American agriculture. Fiske’s documentation of daily life on the reservation includes such shots as Sioux customers waiting for a Fort Yates trading store to open; a Sioux dance in the streets of Fort Yates; a plow issue before the agency boarding school; an encampment of tipis, including those traditionally painted; and three Indian men being taxied off the reservation to join the army in WWI.

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