Archives West Finding Aid

Marsena Cannon, Sr., was born on August 3, 1812 in Rochester, New Hamshire, to Mary Wingate Horne and Dr. Hiram Cannon. Marsena Cannon married Elizabeth Taylor Bowerman (1818-1882) on September 29, 1838; together, the couple had seven children. In the 1840s, while living in Boston, Massachusetts, the Cannons converted to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. In 1850, the Cannons migrated to the Utah Territory.

Marsena Cannon was a photographer who had been taught daguerreotype photography by John Plumb, and worked for Plumbe running a daguerreotype gallery in Boston. The 1847 bankruptcy of Plumbe's chain of galleries led Cannon to set up his own studio in Boston, which he shared with William Shew for several years until migrating west in 1850. Upon arriving in Salt Lake City, Cannon set up business as a photographer. Cannon is credited as the first commercial daguerreotypist to establish a permanent business in the Intermountain West. Throughout the 1850s, Cannon partnered with numerous other photographers, and with them dominated commercial photography in Salt Lake City. Cannon photographed scenes of Salt Lake City, portraits of residents, and portraits of leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, including numerous photographs of Brigham Young. In the 1860s, the Cannon family moved to St. George, Utah, where they lived for several years. The Cannons returned to Salt Lake City by late 1864, where Cannon established a venture exhibiting stereoscopes. Cannon later reopened his studio, but he was never able to regain his prominence as a photographer against numerous competitors who had come to Salt Lake City as it grew.

In 1874, Marsena Cannon was excommunicated from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. After this point, the elderly Marsena Cannon lived with his children. By 1878, he was living with his youngest son Eron Cannon (1857-1939) in San Francisco, California, where Eron Cannon had followed his father into the photography business. After several years, Cannon moved in with his daughter Sarah Cannon (1853-?) in California. After Sarah married, Cannon moved back to Utah to live with his son Bowman Cannon (1847-1901), who was managing the Salt Lake County INfirmary and Poor Farm. Marsena Cannon died on April 29, 1900, in Salt Lake City, Utah.

(Source: Peter E. Palmquist and Thomas R. Kailbourn, "Cannon, Marsena," Pioneer Photographers of theFar West: A Biographical Dictionary, 1840-1865 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000), 148-150. )