These strangers from Waco’s past are mostly somber. The portraits of residents long gone stare solemnly from the walls of antique stores or library shelves.

Stella Yeates, about 10, poses in this circa 1995 photo by photographers Jackson and Knight.
Image courtesy of the Lawrence T. Jones III Collection, DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University

A carte de visite by photographers Jackson and Knight was labeled “My sweet brother Joe Smith, March 2nd 1876.” Waco had at least three white men named Joseph Smith living in the city during the 1870 U.S. Census.
Image courtesy of the Lawrence T. Jones III Collection, DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University

Having one’s photograph taken used to be a rare and expensive event, not unlike having one’s portrait painted for posterity. A person’s bearing, smart clothes and a dignified expression commanded much respect in the Victorian society of the late 1800s.

One way people preserved their own past for their contemporaries was through what are known as carte de visite or visitors’ cards, a type of small photograph exchanged among one’s social set more than a century ago.

An archive known as the Lawrence T. Jones III Texas Photography Collection at Southern Methodist University contains more than 5,000 images collected during a 30-year period. The images cover a century of Texas photographers, photography and history from the days of early statehood until the end of World War II.

A few of these pictures feature Wacoans in daguerreotypes, ambrotypes, tintypes, stereographs and paper print photographs in various formats.

Although calling cards had been around Europe since the 1600s — when the footmen of aristrocrats delivered them to the servants of their prospective hosts to formally introduce their arrival — the practice of exchanging visitors’ cards really took off in the New World with the advent of portrait photography.

The predecessors of cartes de visite were calling cards. During the 1850s, it was the custom to present one’s card at the time of a social visit.

These cards were smaller than today’s business cards, frequently consisting of a name engraved and printed on glossy stock. In later years, designs became more elaborate. Families would often provide decorative trays or baskets to receive calling cards from visitors.

It was originally patented in Paris in 1854 by a French photographer who created a method of taking eight separate negatives on a single plate, which reduced production costs. The cartes de visite were standardized as an albumen print (thin paper image mounted on a thicker paper stock) card about 2 inches by 3.5 inches, making them easy to trade between one’s friends, relations and business partners.

The fad migrated from Europe to the United States about the time of the Civil War, when the format gained momentum as soldiers and their kin posed for each other before being separated by war or even death.

Friends and family members now had a means of inexpensively obtaining images of loved ones and sending them through the mail in small envelopes, not the bulky cases of the previous generation of the technology — the daguerreotype and ambrotype.

Photos of the celebrities of the era — politicians, scientists, actors and authors — became an instant hit with the clamoring public. People were not only buying photographs of themselves to share with others, but also images of the famous, powerful or influential.

Albums for the collection and display of cards that catalogued a family’s friends and extended relatives often held an honored space in the proper Victorian parlor of any middle class home.

The craze for carte de visite eventually faded in the late 1870s with the rise of the “cabinet cards,” also albumen prints but mounted on larger cardboard backing 4.5 inches by 6.5 inches.

Cabinet cards — a format large enough to record entire wedding parties or outdoor views — remained popular into the early 20th century, when Kodak introduced the Brownie, the first commercial camera for the masses, which made point-and-shoot photography a widespread, popular hobby.

Additional sources: AmericanAntiquarian.org, Photography.com, PhotographyMuseum.org, PhotoTree.com, Ancestry.com.

A baby named Charles B. Barrett gazes at the camera in December 1874. During an era when child mortality was high, photographs of loved ones were prized by people who could afford them.
Image courtesy of the Lawrence T. Jones III Collection, DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University

A Waco-area family from about 1870 also posed for Jackson and Knight.
Image courtesy of the Lawrence T. Jones III Collection, DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University

This photo of a young woman of the 1870s in Waco shows an elaborate hairstyle of the era that took hours to prepare.
Image courtesy of the Lawrence T. Jones III Collection, DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University

A young woman of the 1870s in Waco, Lucy Davis Thomson, wears an elaborate hairstyle of the era.
Image courtesy of the Lawrence T. Jones III Collection, DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University