William J. Brings was born July 17, 1881, in Cross Plains, Wisconsin. His parents were German immigrants and sharecroppers. His father had come to the United States in 1860 while in his early teens. The family moved from Cross Plains to South Milwaukee where William Brings worked in a machine shop and a horseshoe factory. From there he went to Racine, Wisconsin, where he got a job in a bicycle factory. After leaving the bicycle factory, he apprenticed with a photographer in South Milwaukee by the name of Smoot and then started his own photography business in Racine. A postcard depicting The Brings Studio in Racine, postmarked August 1907, survives as evidence of this business venture.
Brings left Wisconsin for Montana in 1908. He arrived first in Billings and then worked odd jobs in Hysham and Sanders before going to Hardin, where he worked as a roofer. He later established himself as a photographer in Hardin, taking photographs there and on the Crow Indian Reservation during the period 1908-1910. His fiancé, Anna E. Condon, followed him to Hardin and they were married at St. Xavier Mission by Father Thomas Grant in July 8, 1909.
By 1910, Brings moved to Laurel, Montana, where he opened a studio. It may have been the lack of business in Laurel, the homestead fever, or a combination of the two, but Brings soon decided to give up the photography business and became a farmer. He homesteaded on 320 acres of dry land overlooking Laurel and the Yellowstone Valley. He first had a homestead shack and later built a house after "proving up." His move to the homestead was probably an unfortunate decision, since mechanization was already beginning to make wheat farms of this size unprofitable.
By the fall of 1918 the family was forced to move to Billings where Brings worked at various jobs during the next four or five years. In about 1923 he decided to make another try at farming and moved back to the homestead, but in the fall of 1926 he gave up the venture and moved to Oregon. He never got back into photography again except during the summer of 1924 or 1925, when he worked several months for a photographer in Red Lodge.
In Oregon, Brings worked in a sawmill until 1942 when he and Anna moved to Santa Cruz, California. Brings died in Santa Cruz on August 26, 1958, at the age of 77.
Photographs in the collection are all taken by William Brings except one portrait of Brings credited to Smoot Photo, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The Photograph Archives made contact copy prints of all negatives that did not have matching prints. Most of the photographs in the collection appear to have been taken when Brings was a photographer in Hardin. He took many photographs on the Crow Indian Reservation during the period 1908-1910. The photographs of Crow Indian people and St. Xavier Mission in Montana are particularly significant. There are also images of Hardin and Laurel and homestead life in eastern Montana during the early twentieth century. The dates of the photographs range from 1906-1913.
The photographs are arranged by subject and organized into eight subject-based series: Series I. Brings family, Series II. Brings family Residences, Series III. Brings Studios, Series IV. Card Games, Series V. Cemeteries, Series VI. Cities and Towns, Series VII. Indians of North America, and Series VIII. Missions.
Photographs in this collection cannot be published without crediting the photographer, William J. Brings.
The Montana Historical Society is the owner of the materials in the Photograph Archives collections and makes available reproductions for research, publication, and other uses. Written permission must be obtained from the Photograph Archives before any reproduction use. The Society does not necessarily hold copyright to all of the materials in its collections. In some cases, permission for use may require seeking additional authorization from the copyright owners.
William J. Brings photographs. Lot 010. [Box and folder number.] Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, Helena, Montana
Acquisition information available upon request.
1 album containing 68 copy prints was donated to the Photograph Archives in 1976, PAc 76-110. Then in 1977, the same donor also gave the society 29 glass negatives and 4 nitrate film negatives, PAc 77-45. The two accessions were combined into one collection. The prints in the album were removed and matched to the glass and film negatives. Also, contact prints of the glass and film negatives were made in 2005 and substituted for many of the copy prints that have been in the album. 28 copy prints have no matching vintage negatives. Three vintage postcards in PAc 2000-46 taken by Brings were transferred to this collection. 1 vintage postcard was transferred to this collection from PAc 2008-109.
The collection was reprocessed by Lory Morrow in 2005.
See the William Brings Letter 1908-, SC 1394, for related materials. Biographical information was taken from a biographical statement in this small collection written by Brings' son, Vincent J. Brings.
This collection is indexed under the following headings. Researchers desiring materials about related topics, persons, or places should search under these terms.