Distinctly Montana Magazine

W W W. D I S T I N C T LY M O N TA NA . C O M 43 Ball (1825-1904) dealt with rapidly evolving technologies, from the unwieldy daguerreotype in the 1840s to the simple, easy to duplicate photo- graphic prints of the early 1900s. Born free in Virginia, James Presley Ball said that he made his up mind to become a photog- rapher in 1845 after "a chance meeting" with a black, Bostonian daguerreotypist named John B. Bailey. In Cincinnati, Ohio, he became proficient in a range of practices, including the ambrotype, the tintype, the stereotype, and the one named after Louis J.M. Daguerre, the popular daguerreotype. Early daguerreotypes and ambrotypes were protected individually and displayed beneath glass in velvet-lined cases. Tintypes, which also are single images, were popular because they were cheap; these were commonly kept in paper sleeves or window-like mats. After 1860, mechanically reproduced cartes de visite (visiting cards) and cabinet cards became increasingly popular, and were often stored in collector albums. In the early 1850s, Ball and his future brother-in-law, Alexander omas, formed "Ball & omas," which earned the reputation as "the finest photographic gallery west of the Allegheny Mountains," according to one contemporary newspaper. By 1853, Ball operated a well-equipped studio that included the service of nine employees. e studio promised the public "e most lifelike, the most beauti- ful, the most durable, the cheapest" daguerreotypes. One work sold for $63,000 at the Swann Auction Galleries. In 1855, J.P. Ball put on exhibit at the Boston Armory a 2,400-square-foot antislavery photo panorama called Ball 's Splendid Mammoth Pictorial Tour of the United States, Comprising Views of the African Slave Trade; of Northern and Southern Cities; of Cotton and Sugar Plantations; of the Mississippi, Ohio, and Susquehanna Rivers, Niagara Falls, & C. (Unfortunately, the exhibit did not survive.) In 1856, Ball passed through Europe, photographing, among others, Queen Victoria and author Charles Dickens. As Ball's status swelled, many renowned subjects appeared at his Cincinnati studio, including distinguished abolitionist Frederick Douglass, Ulysses S. Grant's mother and sister, Jenny Lind, black orator Henry Highland Garnet, and several Union Army officers and soldiers. Perennially under the threat of asset liquida- tion and bankruptcy, Ball moved to several towns and cities across the midwest and rural south. In 1887, wanting to alleviate his persistent rheuma- tism in a drier climate, Ball arrived in Helena, Montana Territory, with his son, daughter and daughter-in-law. Additionally, he sought to live in a western society that was more tolerant of blacks. (In 1882, voters in Helena passed a referendum ending segregated public schools. e next year, the territorial legislature repealed the segregation law for the entire territory.) e 1888 Helena City Directory lists the resi- dence for father and son as 129 Broadway. In 1870 there were about 180 persons "of full or partial black ancestry" in the Montana Territory, and by 1880 the number had approximately doubled to 356. But the highest proportion of blacks in Montana was in the territorial center of Helena, where in 1870 the black population was 2.3 percent of the total. Fort Benton and Butte contained the other highest concentrations of black people. In December 1887, James Presley Ball was nominated as a dele- gate to a state civil rights convention and later ran for several offices on the Republican ticket. He later became president of Montana's Afro-American Club and co-founded the St. James AME Church (114 N Hoback Street, now a private residence). He was nominated for a county coroner position (which he declined). His son, James Presley Ball Jr. was the editor of the Colored Citi- zen, the earliest of three newspapers published for black readers in Montana before World War I. (In 1900, black Americans repre- sented only 1 percent (1,523) of the state population, but the com- munity published two other newspapers, the Montana Plaindealer in Helena and the New Age in Butte.) Ball, Jr. proclaimed in the inaugural issue, published on Septem- ber 3, 1894, the paper's foundational philosophy and mission: "It cannot be denied that our people, through force of circumstance, J A M E S P R E S L E Y B A L L R E N O W N E D B L A C K P H O T O G R A P H E R I N H E L E N A T HE WIDELY CONVENTIONAL DATE FOR THE BIRTH OF COMMERCIAL PHOTOGRAPHY IS 1839, when Frenchman Louis-Jacques- Mandé Daguerre's invention of the daguerreotype was announced publicly. Within several years, black Americans were at the vanguard of this medium, including James Presley Ball who achieved great success in Cincinnati beginning in the 1850s, and who later lived and worked in Helena, Montana, between approximately 1887 and 1900. by BRIAN D'AMBROSIO Montana U.S. Senator Lee Mantle

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