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Lawrence Denny Lindsley photographs, circa 1890-1925

Overview of the Collection

Photographer
Lindsley, Lawrence Denny, 1878-1975
Title
Lawrence Denny Lindsley photographs
Dates
circa 1890-1925 (inclusive)
Quantity
3 boxes, (1.09 cubic feet)
Collection Number
1969.5072
Summary
Photographs of Washington State landscapes, including mining at Esther Mine, the Cascade range and Lake Chelan. Also includes photographs of Denny family members and of historic Seattle collected by Lindsley.
Repository
Museum of History & Industry, Sophie Frye Bass Library

P.O. Box 80816
Seattle, WA
98108
Telephone: 2063241126 x102
library@mohai.org
Access Restrictions

The collection is open to the public by appointment.

Languages
English.
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Biographical Note

While working as a miner, woodsman, and wilderness guide as well as a photographer, Lawrence D. Lindsley took thousands of photographs of the Washington State landscape, from the Cascades to the Olympic coast, and east to Lake Chelan. Lindsley photographed everything from grand landscapes to the individual blossoms of native plants, as well as mining camps, early settlements, and home and family scenes.

Lawrence Denny Lindsley (1878-1975) was the grandson of Seattle pioneer and entrepeneur David T. Denny, who arrived in Seattle in 1851 with the first party of the city's founders. Lindsley's mother, Abbie Denny Lindsley (born 1858), was David and Louisa Boren Denny's third child, and his father, builder Edward L. Lindsley, arrived in Seattle in 1873. The couple married in 1877 and Lawrence, their first child, was born in 1878.

Lindsley grew up with a love of the outdoors and a pioneer's spirit of adventure. At the age of 11, Lindsley helped his father with the construction of his grandfather's real estate office, a log cabin at the foot of Queen Anne Hill near Republican Street. Now known as the Denny Cabin and relocated to the Historic Cabin Park in Federal Way, the structure was several blocks northwest of the Great Seattle Fire which swept through downtown Seattle five weeks after the cabin's completion. A frightened Lindsley watched from his Denny Hill home with his sister Mabel on his lap as the fire destroyed several city blocks, but spared the newly constructed cabin.

In 1895, Lindsley went to work at the Esther Mine at the head of Gold Creek in Kittitas County. David Denny owned the Esther Mine in Ptarmigan Park, and many Denny men worked at the mine, including Lindsley's uncle Victor W.S. Denny, who appears in many of Lindsley's photographs. Around the same time, David Denny was also in charge of the construction of a wagon road across Snoqualmie Pass. In the late 1890s, Lindsley worked and took pictures at both the road project and the mine, documenting at the latter the mine itself as well as life at the mine cabin. Later, Lindsley and Rolland Herschel Denny climbed the ridge connecting the Four Brothers formation--name for David Denny's sons John, Thomas and Victor, and his son-in-law Edward Lindsley-- to Chikamin Peak. It was probably on this trip that Denny and Lindsley inscribed their names on the rock immediately northwest of Four Brothers peak, as depicted in Lindsley's photograph. An early explorer of the North Cascades, Lindsley became a charter member of the Mountaineers Club in 1907. He became famous for his many photos of Mount Rainier, the Lake Chelan region, Snoqualmie Pass and other areas, and he avidly studied the native plants and wildlife which he captured in his photographs.

In 1903, Lindsley started work at the W. P. Romans Photographic Company in Seattle, which Asahel Curtis then purchased in 1910. He later worked for Edward S. Curtis, helping to develop some of the gold tone negatives that Curtis used in his famous “Indians of North America” series. Sometime between 1910 and 1914, Lindsley moved to Lake Chelan and lived on his parent’s land near 25 Mile Creek. During this time, he worked for the Great Northern Railroad photographing Glacier National Park for the railroad’s tourist literature. He also began his extensive photographic study, lasting several years, of Lake Chelan and the North Cascades. In these Chelan years and later, Lindsley worked as a wilderness guide, probably for the Mountaineers, leading parties along the lake and into the Stehekin wilderness. In September 1916 Lindsley, with Dan Devore, was hired by the Great Northern Railroad as the guide, cook and packer for the party of author Mary Roberts Rinehart through the Lake Chelan area. The taciturn Lindsley figured prominently as “Silent Lawrie” in Rinehart's published account of the expedition, and in a later novel based in the Cascades.When Lindsley returned to Seattle he resumed working in Edward Curtis’s studio, continued work on his own landscape and nature photography throughout the 1920s, and worked on the technique of lantern slide photography.

Lindsley was also a prolific writer, and kept journals for most of his adult life. He wrote lengthy captions on the backs of many of his photographs, expanding on the content of the photo by adding history, context and detail which cumulatively provide a lively and personal depiction of early Seattle and Washington State.

Lindsley married twice. His first marriage, to Pearl A. Miller in 1918, ended when his wife and newborn daughter, Abbie, died in 1920. In 1944, Lindsley married photographer and coloring artist Sarah Sonju, working with her in his studio until her death in 1960. Living in Seattle’s Wallingford District for over fifty years, Lindsley continued to photograph into his 90s. Lawrence D. Lindsley died in 1975.

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Content Description

The collection is comprised of four separate accessions: Accession No. 1969.5072; Accession No. 1974.5903; Accession No. 1975.6169; and Accession No. 1987.89

The collection includes representations from Lindsley's various photographic series. The most extensive group depicts Lindsley and others, including Victor W.S. Denny, at Esther Mine in Kittitas County, part of Lindsley's "Gold Creek" series. Other images depict Mount Rainier and other Cascades landscapes, Lake Chelan, rock formations and native plants.

Lindsley also collected and copied images of historic Seattle for his "Old Seattle" series. These images includes depictions of early Seattle, of historic Seattle events such as the Great Fire, of Indian settlements, of ships on the waterfront, and of Denny family members and Denny residences, including the original Denny cabin at Alki Point. The collection includes a number of these images, including a set of lantern slides which Lindsley probably used to illustrate talks to community groups.

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Use of the Collection

Restrictions on Use

The Museum of History & Industry is the owner of the materials in the Sophie Frye Bass Library and makes available reproductions for research, publication, and other uses. Written permission must be obtained from MOHAI before any reproduction use. The museum does not necessarily hold copyright to all of the materials in the collections. In some cases, permission for use may require seeking additional authorization from the copyright owners.

Preferred Citation

Lawrence Denny Lindsley Photographs, Museum of History & Industry, Seattle

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Administrative Information

Arrangement

Arranged into three series:

  • Photographs
  • Photograph albums
  • Lantern slides

Location of Collection

2a.4.9-10

Acquisition Information

Accession No. 1969.5072: Gift of L. Burns Lindsey (?), 1969.

Accession No. 1974.5903: Gift of Mary Louisa McBride, June 1974.

Accession No. 1975.6169: Gift of Dorothy V. Lindsley, October 1975.

Accession No. 1987.89: Gift of Mrs. Victor Denny, November 1987

Processing Note

The collection is a merger of four donations.

Separated Materials

These materials are parts of donations that also included a number of artifacts. These artifacts are cataloged and stored separately by MOHAI's Collections Department.

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Detailed Description of the Collection

The following section contains a detailed listing of the materials in the collection.

Names and SubjectsReturn to Top

Subject Terms

  • Dwellings--Washington (State)--Seattle
  • Miners--Dwellings--Washington (State)--Kittitas County
  • Miners--Washington (State)--Kittitas County
  • Women pioneers--Washington (State)--Seattle

Personal Names

  • Denny, David Thomas--Photographs
  • Denny, Louisa Boren--Photographs
  • Denny, Victor--Photographs
  • Lindsley, Abbie Denny--Photographs

Geographical Names

  • Chelan, Lake (Wash.)
  • United States--Washington(State)--King County--Seattle
  • United States--Washington(State)--Kittitas County--Ptarmigan Park
  • United States--Washington(State)--Ptarmigan Park

Form or Genre Terms

  • Lantern slides
  • Photograph albums
  • Photographic prints

Finding aid prepared by Jody Hendrickson
2008

CC Attribution
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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