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 ENTER
GALLERY
Dryden Mutual Insurance Company was founded in early 1860 as Dryden &
Groton Mutual Fire Insurance Company by members of small rural
communities on the eastern side of Tompkins County. For the following
century, the company kept to its original mission to insure the farms
and homes of local residents. Eventually, in the early 1970’s, it began
to expand into other counties and other lines of business statewide.
Today, as Dryden Mutual approaches its 150th anniversary, it ranks among
the top 100 insurance organizations in New York State.
In order to celebrate this
sesquicentennial in 2010, Dryden Mutual elected to purchase and
publicize an extensive collection of glass plate negative photos taken
by one of our own early insureds, a Mr. Verne Morton of Groton, NY. He
lived on a farm in Groton with his brother all his life, from 1868 to
1945. He was a part-time farmer and a part-time school teacher in the
neighboring community of Lansing, NY.
 He acquired an intense interest
in early photographic methods and became an expert in the glass plate
photo process. During his life he produced a collection of over 12,000
glass plate negatives which are now preserved permanently in the
collections of The History Center in Tompkins County. Some of the best
examples of his work are displayed in miniature on this website and in
dramatic enlarged digital reproductions on the walls of Dryden Mutual’s
offices. These marvelous photos are available in many sizes for public
purchase directly from The History Center in Ithaca, NY.
Why is the work of Verne Morton
important? To paraphrase Louis C. Jones’ (Director Emeritus of the New
York State Historical Association) forward to a book of on Verne Morton
photos published by The DeWitt Historical Society in 1983:
“It was only in the 1930’s that we
began to appreciate the painters and cravers who worked outside
the mainstream of the arts – those creative people we call our folk
artists. We are just now beginning to discover our folk photographers,
little known beyond their own villages, blessed with a sympathetic eye
that led them to create an index of their times. Upstate New York’s
Verne Morton of Groton (12 miles northeast of Ithaca), is one of these
previously unsung amateur craftsmen whose work proclaims its own
excellent quality.
He comes through to us … as a quiet, reserved man lacking the robust
physique of his rural contemporaries, a devoted and admired teacher with
a strong interest in children and nature and an orderly curiosity about
such processes as varied as pumpkin pie making, beekeeping and roof
raising. In a later time he might well have been involved in
documentary films, for he nurtured the prototypes of that art form ...
Morton concentrated on subjects that he liked, staying within the rural
world that he understood so well in the fields and small communities
surrounding the villages of Dryden and Groton, New York. One gets the
strong feeling that he simply photographed what directly appealed to him
and seemed to have done it purely as a diversion for himself. He
documented those striking changes that came over rural New York between
1897, when he began to photograph, and his death in 1945. The horse
goes, the car comes; time and distance are compressed by the women he
photographed at their switchboards and in their kitchens; tractors
replace the plow; poles and wires come to deface village streets; and
bicycles come in while goat carts go out.
These photographs appeal … on two different levels, some of them are
fascinating documents, others are beautifully successful as works of
art. The documents are especially useful in evaluating work in the
field and both inside and outside the house. The recording of the new
farm and road-making machinery conveys a sense of the excitement these
inventions brought to farmers and villagers alike. His sharp,
accurate focus gives us a sense of immediacy and makes analysis of the
century-old procedures remarkably easy. The record of women’s indoor
work is similarly insightful, but we also see women haying, cutting
corn, harvesting potatoes, and picking strawberries - sometimes alone,
other times with their children and men…”
Please feel free to join us in the exploration and enjoyment of the
available examples of Verne Morton’s remarkable imagery from so long
ago. |
