MUTUAL LIFE INSURANCE COMPANY OF NEW YORK
by HOUSEWORTH & CO, PHOTO
(PHOTOGRAPHY-SAN FRANCISCO) HOUSEWORTH & CO, PHOTO. MUTUAL LIFE INSURANCE COMPANY OF NEW YORK. San Francisco: Francis & Valentine, (1875). Advertising piece (6 1/2 x 4 1/4 inches) printed in red, blue and gold, with mounted Albumen photograph (1 1/2 1 inches) of a well-dressed woman from the neck up. Finely printed on yellow card stock, with the text about the Mutual Life Insurance Company down the middle, flanked by vertical decorative borders in gold within which are ads for Houseworth photographers, the legend on one sid reading, "The celebrated Artist, S.P. Wells from New York, is at Houseworth's S.P. Wells had a long career as a daguerreotypist and photographer from the 1850s to the 1890s. Presumably, it was he who took the photograph pasted her of a woman which is identified in pencil on verso in a contemporary hand as "Mary E. Sproston," whom we have identified as having been born in New Jersey 1842, married one George T. Sproston, gave birth to a daughter in Nevada in 1870, before moving on to San Francisco. Fine. (Inventory #: 39547)