Charles D. Beckwith (photographer)
Charles D. Beckwith (c. 1832/1833 - July 13, 1891) was an early frontier photographer who operated studios in California, Utah and Idaho during the late nineteenth century. Early years Charles D. Beckwith was born about 1832 or 1833 in Broome County, New York. At the age of sixteen, he headed west during the great gold rush of 1849, hoping to start a new life in California. He boarded a ship, the Areatus, in Boston and sailed as a passenger around Cape Horn and arrived in San Francisco in September 1849. Presumably he tried his hand at gold mining but later turned to other work to support himself. By 1858, Beckwith opened a daguerreian gallery in Yreka, California. He reportedly also did some work in Oregon and then opened a studio briefly in Crescent City, California. In June 1859, he returned to Yreka where he reopened his gallery, offering to produce portraits as daguerreotypes, ambrotypes and melainotypes, along with "all the latest style of pictures." Civil War With the outbreak of the American Civil War, the governor of California was called upon to raise volunteer regiments to fight back east and to guard the Overland Trail. Recruitment posters sprouted up throughout