Laramie Photographer E.N. Rogers Finds unique way to serve in WWI
Edward Neville Rogers (1864-1950) came to Laramie in 1904 so he could breathe.
This native of London, England immigrated around 1885 and became a naturalized citizen, probably when he lived in Nebraska. There he found farm work and a wife. He was burdened with a life-long asthmatic condition, most likely caused by environmental factors including extreme hay fever.
Perhaps the once-famous smog and fog from coal-burning London households and factories irritated his asthma too, causing him to seek the clean air of America around age 20.
Farming a poor choice
But the first place he found work—on a farm—was clearly not a good occupation for him. Every year around harvest time he would head for Colorado, where the air enabled him to breathe more easily. But he had married the farmer’s daughter, Hattie Lucinda Scrimsher of Nebraska, and they had five children. Hattie lived on or near her father’s farm in Johnson County, Nebraska while her husband spent summers and fall further west seeking relief from hay fever.
Just over the state line from the Nebraska farm was the town of Tarkio, Missouri. Rogers apparently became an apprentice photographer there, learning the then-standard dry plate process. This produced negatives on heavy glass plates from which any number of prints could be produced. Somehow he managed to purchase a Century camera that could produce high-quality prints from the about 8 by 6 inch glass plates.
Photography was a much better profession than farming for the asthmatic man. Soon he convinced Hattie to bring the children and move with him to Greeley, Colorado. Their sixth child, Margery, was born and died there in 1903.
Moves to Laramie
The following year a Colorado doctor from whom he sought help for his asthmatic attacks, advised him to move to a high and dry place, and may have mentioned Laramie. There was a photography studio in Laramie with an owner anxious to sell. He bought the business in 1904. “Rogers Studio” was on the second floor of the old Thobro Building at 311 S. 2nd St. (north of the present-day Wyoming Women’s History House).
Much of what we know about his life comes from recollections of his oldest child, Elsie M. Rogers McCollough (1889-1990). She was about 14 when she and her four surviving siblings (four girls and one boy) moved to Laramie in 1904. After that, Elsie almost never left Laramie. She died at age 100 and lived most of her life in a house at 1120 Ivinson Ave., just five blocks away from the house her father built for the family around 1908. Her oral history was recorded in 1984; a transcript is at the Albany County Public Library.
It’s interesting that at about the same time, another European immigrant photographer, German-born Henning Svenson, came to Laramie. Svenson arrived in 1905 as a bachelor, though he soon married and put down permanent roots in Laramie.
Though nominal competitors, their careers took off in different directions. Svenson was eager to record everything he saw, leaving a legacy of hundreds of film images recording everyday life in the area around Laramie that his family carried on when he died in 1932.
Glass plate vs. film
Rogers (who always went by his initials, “E.N.”) was still using glass plates for photography, which required him to be more selective. Studio photography was his mainstay, especially taking photos of Laramie’s Scandinavian residents for them to send to family in the “old country,” as daughter Elsie recalls.
If he had a commission, Rogers would take his camera and the heavy plates into the field. The Laramie Republican newspaper has several reports of him taking photographs to document development in the Keystone area, at the Lake Hattie Reservoir Project, and for the Laramie Valley Land and Irrigation Company. A shipment of glass plates he had taken weighed over 600 pounds when shipped to the lumber company in Chicago that had commissioned them for advertising, the Laramie Republican newspaper reported.
In 1910, Rogers advertised in the newspaper that his Century camera was for sale, “cheap,” indicating that he had switched to the newer and much less clumsy film process. This put him in direct competition with Svenson. The two photographers had a cordial working relationship, however; they joined forces to urge the Laramie City Council in December, 1913 to ban itinerant merchants. This was likely over complaints about photographers who arrived by train and quickly left town without delivering promised photos.
Their idea of an ordinance was unworkable, the city attorney felt, and the council took no action on the request.
Studio is sold
Rogers never bought display ads in the newspapers like Svenson did and seemed to rely more on word-of-mouth advertising. Perhaps he sold picture frames as well. In fact, when he sold the studio around 1917 to Miss E.V. Hull, she operated it as “Rogers Studio “ but it was also known as the Rogers Gift Shop.
The reasons for the sale of the studio may go back to his asthma problem. The new film process for developing negatives required chemicals that irritated him, according to daughter Elsie. Although she had married attorney Albert McCollough in 1915 and no longer lived at home, she observed that her father was a “typical asthmatic.” He was “pretty bad,” she said, with temper tantrums and general high-strung behavior.
He had been the president of the Laramie Commercial Club, the Literary Society, and a member of the Masonic Lodge according to his obituary. Also in 1914, he became very engaged in civic life as a founder of the Laramie Civic Club, a nonpartisan organization encouraging citizens to take an active part in government.
He practiced what he preached, and was nominated on the Democratic “pro-business” ticket for Justice of the Peace in the 1914 election, but lost. In 1917 he announced that his house at 412 S. 9th St. was for rent—apparently Hattie was living with a daughter in California by that time and the studio was about to be sold.
WW I Volunteer
The fact that Britain declared war against Germany in 1914 must have weighed heavily on Rogers. As an asthmatic, Rogers knew that he would not be allowed to serve when America entered the war in 1917. But eager to do something, he joined the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA), which was sending volunteers to England to provide support for Allied soldiers on leave in London.
Just before he left for England in the late summer of 1918, he sued his wife Hattie for divorce after nearly 30 years of marriage. No doubt the sale of the “Rogers Studio” had already been finalized.
He arrived in England on September 5, 1918. Occasional reports from London indicate that he was acting as a guide to his native city for Allied soldiers on leave, assisting as soon as they arrived on British soil. If needed, he would escort them to one of the three hotels the YMCA operated in London that had accommodations for 1,000 soldiers. The US military contracted with the YMCA for this help; the Army called it “entertainment.”
There was still a need for the WMCA volunteers even after the Germans surrendered and the active war ended in November of 1918. American soldiers whose leaves had been cancelled during the fighting could request to go to London or Paris for up to two weeks before embarking for home. Some took advantage of that opportunity.
Nearly a year after the armistice, the Laramie Boomerang announced in October, 1919, that Rogers would be returning from service in the YMCA military division, where he had attained the rank of major. For his service with the YMCA, he was given an honorary membership in the American Legion.
However, his former Laramie studio was not only sold but suffered damage from a restaurant fire downstairs, and all his glass negatives were lost.
There is a brief mention in the Boomerang on November 3, 1919 that “game warden E.N. Rogers,” is selling hunting licenses. Thereafter for a year or two, Rogers Studio was a location for the purchase of game licenses. By 1929 he was able to start a in business in a new location . No longer a photographic studio, the shop was called “Rogers Art and Gifts” at 209 Ivinson in the Converse Building [now replaced by the First Interstate Bank parking lot]. His home was at 817 University.
No flowers, please
E.N. Rogers didn’t live to see the invention of inhalers introduced in 1955 for asthma sufferers. In his lifetime, smoking belladonna-containing plant material in cigarettes was a standard treatment for adults to relieve bronchial inflammation—though we have no evidence that he used them.
According to his obituary, he had been ill for a year when he died at Ivinson Hospital at age 86 in 1950. Appropriately enough for a hay fever sufferer, no flowers were requested for his funeral. He is buried in the same plot used later by his daughter Elsie Rogers McCollough and her family at Laramie’s Greenhill Cemetery. In addition to over 10 grandchildren, he left a legacy of photographs that help tell the story of Laramie.
By Judy Knight
E.N. Rogers
Source: Laramie Daily Boomerang, October 28, 1914
Postcard print, probably from a lost glass plate negative taken by E.N. Rogers, dated 1908, showing the coal fired steam engine pumper of the Laramie Fire Department in operation at First St. and Grand Ave. “Tammany Hall” building is in the right background. Currently this “Engine No. 2” is on display at Laramie Fire Station 3 in West Laramie. Source: Laramie Plains Museum, Roach Collection.