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RULOFSON, William Hermanes (4760)

Parents

Birth

  • Born on August 27, 1826 in Hampton, Kings Co., NB

Death

  • Died on November 02, 1878 in San Francisco, San Francisco Co., CA
  • Buried in Woodlawn Memorial Park in Colma, San Mateo Co., CA

Marriages

Children

Notes

  • Occupation: Photographer
  • Death: Fell off the top of the building where he had his studio.
  • Marriage Notice: m. St. Thomas Church, St. John's, Nfld., 25th Oct., by Rev. E.A. Sall, William Hermanes RULOFSON of (St. John) N.B. / Amelia Violet CURRIE second d/o Archibald CURRIE of former place.
  • Historical Information: William was a wealthy and honored man, who, having been in California since 1849, had qualified himself for membership in the Society of California Pioneers. A brief episode of gold mining instructed him that the way to wealth lay in photography, a skill he had mastered before leaving Canada. With a huge wagon set up as a "daguerreotype saloon," he plied his trade in the goldfields before settling in Sonora, where once he managed to save his studio from a fire by having a team of oxen draw it out of harm's way. In 1863, he had moved to San Francisco, where he remained until the end of his life, as he grew increasingly prominent in photography. (In 1873, he was to win a gold medal at a competition in Vienna, and in 1874 he would be elected president of the National Photographic Association.) Innovation and creativity lay at the heart of his success. In a wonderful combination of the two modes of representation then competing with each other, he turned a room into a camera and produced life-size photographs. He then engaged a painter to add colors to make the image even more lifelike. He was a founding member of the Bohemian Club and its official photographer. Beneath this surface of respectability and success lay small deceptions and dissimulations. One of his death notices declared that he was a native of Pennsylvania, another that he had been born in Maine. Rulofson liked to relate that he had been shipwrecked in 1846 and landed, after "proloned suffering," destitute, at Liverpool. Only his skill as a photographer, he said, had enabled him to earn his return passage. He wanted people to believe that he had overcome obstacles through self-reliance, ability, and determination. Only much later did close inquiry reveal that the ship in question was outbound from Liverpool when it went aground, and that its passengers were given free passage on the next available ship. Many episodes mentioned in reports of his election as president of the Photographic Association were similarly fictitious: he had not, for instance, been as a teenager "a wanderer over many lands, including Europe, America, and the islands of the sea.

Sources

  • Findagrave.com: http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=87352314
  • California Cemeteries: Woodlawn Memorial Park Colma,CA Plot: 210 Section E

Images