Betty

Today we visited The Hermitage, home of president Andrew Jackson outside of Nashville TN. This photo, taken by photographer C.C. Giers caught my eye. C.C. Giers was a prominent photographer in 1867 in Nashville.

Here is some info about him....his photos of slaves is most amazing! To see other photos of today, visit my FLICKR[/url page.

Carl Casper Giers, born in 1828 in Bonn, Germany, arrived in Nashville in 1852 and worked early on as a railroad conductor on the line providing service to Chattanooga. His obituary in 1877 said he was on the first regular passenger train from Nashville to Murfreesboro. Giers' real talent emerged by 1855 when he went into the relatively new field of photography.

Before his death, brought on by what the Daily American obituary called a "long and painful illness," he recorded the development of Nashville into and out of the Civil War. His legacy at age 49 was hundreds of glass photographic plates — the negatives of their day. His adopted son, Otto Giers (1858-1940), soon revived the family business, continuing the Giers photographic record of the city into the 20th century. "Between these two generations of photographers, they have passed on to us a treasury of images of Nashville at war, rebuilding as a new culture emerging from defeat, and as a prosperous New South city eagerly developing industry, yet maintaining a fine quality of life,"

James Hoobler, a chief curator at the Tennessee State Museum, wrote in his introduction to a two-book set of Giers photos he compiled in 1999-2000. The largest collection of these prints and negatives remains today with a Giers descendant, Nashvillian Sarah Hunter Green, daughter of Otto Giers. Green provided the photos for the books. "My favorite one is a picture of Mrs. James K. Polk, the widow of the president, sitting in a very decorative studio chair that I still have in my house," Green said. "It might have been a bishop's chair from a church." She said the collection eventually will go to a public repository.

The elder Giers apparently was an affable fellow. During the war he photographed soldiers from both sides. He was even granted a pass by Federal forces during Nashville's occupation allowing him to leave the city and return, Hoobler wrote. In 1874, Giers easily was elected to the state House of Representatives, where he was a key promoter of immigration. His photo studio, first using the daguerreotype method, started on the Public Square at Deaderick Street. After the war it moved by 1866 to Union Street, where it remained between Third and Fourth avenues until his death.

Otto Giers, only 19 when his father died, took up photography as a business two years later in 1879 using the family skills he had learned. He initially worked for another photographer, W.G. Thuss, and later with Emil Koellein as well. Otto went on to a 25-year career with Nashville city government, serving as assistant treasurer and later with the "waterworks department" until his retirement about 1932. He died at age 82 in the same house where his family's photographic records were then stored, still standing today at 1619 18th Ave. S. The sharp images remain as a remarkable record of Nashville's former people, scenes and structures. Some still seem familiar, like the original Parthenon when it was built for the state's centennial, the Belmont mansion with its statuary, and Andrew Jackson's Hermitage.

Carl Giers photographed the dignified faces of some of Nashville's former slaves with as much artistry as he used for the city's elite. Railroad entrepreneurs, uniformed military generals and college presidents visited his studio, but so did an unnamed bricklayer with mortar-stained hands and an African-American baby wearing a bonnet.