The Charleston earthquake / August 31st, 1886 / Francis W. Dawson

£19,500 · Offered by Maggs Bros Ltd

A substantial album of vintage albumen photographs showing the devastation to the city of Charleston, South Carolina, following the earthquake of August 31, 1886. It belonged to the English-born Francis W. Dawson (1841-1889) who came to America in 1862 to fight for the Confederacy and was produced between 1886 and the time of Dawson’s sensational murder in 1889 (the au pair who later shot him appears in the first photograph). Estimated to have reached a magnitude of 7.3, the earthquake left 60 people dead and caused substantial property damage to nearly every structure in the city. Felt as far away as Chicago and Cuba, the Charleston earthquake remains one of the strongest recorded earthquakes on the east coast of the United States . The photographs collected in this album were taken by various Charleston photographers in the aftermath of the earthquake and document extensive property damage, soil liquefaction, sink holes and fissures, ruptured rail lines and overturned train cars, and the tent camps erected to house the newly homeless. “At least forty thousand people were ‘tenting’ in Charleston by September 3” (Williams Hoffius, p. 53). A particular focus is placed on the damage sustained by the many Charleston churches and grand private residences. The photographers include George La Grange Cook (1849-1919), son of the prominent Civil War photographer George S. Cook (1819-1902). Cook’s earthquake photographers were popular souvenir items, and he offered some 200 images in

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