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This albumen photograph by H. A. Doerr captures a frame cottage and domestic scene likely located on the outskirts of San Antonio in circa 1881, the year penciled on the verso. The image presents a wide, one-story board-and-batten house with a standing-seam metal roof and deep porches supported by square posts. The main elevation is shaded by vines, and a white picket fence encloses a compact front yard.
In the foreground, a man in a sun helmet holds the reins of a two-horse buggy. On the porch and yard, women and children are gathered informally, likely family members. Notably, at least two African American figures appear further back: one woman stands near the porch while a man stands farther back next to a horse and carriage. Their positioning and body language suggest domestic labor roles, a telling detail in the landscape of post-Reconstruction Texas, where Black labor, often formerly enslaved or tenant-bound, remained embedded in elite and upper-middle-class households well into the 1880s.
The verso bears H. A. Doerr’s characteristic purple oval stamp: H. A. Doerr / Photographer / San Antonio, Tex. Doerr was active in San Antonio from the 1860s until his death in 1885, and by the 1870s was producing larger single-print views such as this one alongside his more common stereographs. The pencil notation "Capt. Campbell" nad "Mrs. C." on the mount has not been definitively traced to a known individual, though military and civic records from the period list several Campbells with ties to the region.
Henry A. Doerr (born Heinrich A. Doerr, Prussia, 1826 – San Antonio, Nov 22 1885) ranks among the earliest professional photographers in Texas. Settling in San Antonio by the late 1840s, he was already advertising his services in local newspapers by 1851 and was later praised as “the first gentleman who took photographs in San Antonio.” Working first on Commerce Street, he produced daguerreotypes, then albumen views and stereographs that document the city’s plazas, missions, and everyday street life. During a career of more than three decades he operated under his own name and in short-lived partnerships with A. Engle, M. T. Jesse, N. Winther, and S. E. Jacobson, all of whom helped disseminate his city and landscape views across Texas and northern Mexico. Doerr’s photographs are now held by the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, the Library of Congress, Southern Methodist University’s DeGolyer Library, and the San Antonio Conservation Society. He is buried in St. John’s Lutheran Cemetery, San Antonio.
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