Local plant store owner Corey McCaffery is collecting historical Delaware photographs in an effort to bring them home.
McCaffery discovered the work of photographer Charles Hall BoDurtha in an antique store about a decade ago. He bought the photo because BoDurtha’s name caught his eye.
As a self-proclaimed “history nerd,” McCaffery said he developed an interest in the story behind the photo. He researched BoDurtha and found that he was a leading figure in the establishment of photography. Further, BoDurtha had been trained in Connecticut before becoming the first person to document life in Venezuela and South America through a lens.
After returning to the U.S., he moved to Delaware, Ohio. There, he practiced photography from 1870 until he died in 1915. During his time in Delaware, he took family photos, senior pictures, portraits, and photos for Le Bijou, Ohio Wesleyan’s yearbook.
Due to the early development of photography as a trade, BoDurtha was one of the only photographers in Delaware at the time. This, in addition to the time and expenses of the trade, made purchasing portraits infrequent.
McCaffery said he realized the photo was likely the only one ever taken of the subject.
“It’s really cool that I am the owner of that,” McCaffery said. “I get to carry on this person’s legacy.”
Currently, McCaffery owns about seventy of BoDurtha’s photos. He finds most of them in antique stores, but he also looks on Ebay. There, he discovered that the photos have been dispersed across the country in states from Florida to California.
McCaffery said he thinks it’s important that the photos are brought back to where they were originally taken.
“I have a goal to bring as many of them back to Delaware as possible, because I know that’s probably where this person’s family still lives,” McCaffery said. “Maybe, by some crazy chance, I’ll be able to reconnect this person with a photo of their ancestor.”
Locating the families of the photograph’s subjects is a difficult task. Many of the photos are not labeled, and those that are often include just a name or date.
Despite the lack of information, McCaffery has succeeded in connecting a family to a BoDurtha portrait. A fully-labeled photo in his collection had the names of both a mother and the baby she was holding. After researching the names, McCaffery located the subjects’ present family, who happened to still live in the Ostrander area.
“It was wild to me that I was like, ‘Hey, I found this photo of your great-great grandpa being held by your great-great-great grandma, would you like to own it?,’” McCaffery said. “It was a very special moment for me.”
McCaffery liked BoDurtha’s work so much that he chose to use the photographer’s name when opening his shop, BoDurtha’s Plant Parlor.
While naming a plant store after a historical photographer may seem odd, many customers appreciate the re-introduction of BoDurtha’s name into the Delaware community.
Rory Housh, an art history major at Ohio Wesleyan, found the name unexpected, but not in a bad way.
“In a historical town like Delaware, I think it’s cool to have context behind certain businesses,” Housh said.
John Scott, an art teacher, agrees with Housh.
“I love that he used a historical name,” Scott said. “Something that somebody who was in Delaware a hundred years ago would be familiar with.”
BoDurtha’s work in Delaware helps shape understanding of what life in Delaware was like a century ago, and that is what McCaffery appreciates most about collecting BoDurtha’s photos.
“It’s really special to me, that I get to play a part in the lives of people from so long ago,” McCaffery said. “That I get to … carry on their legacy, and that includes Charles Hall BoDurtha.”
