Calvin Davis, Country Photographer

A wealthy Arizona woman and her husband who lived in the path of a fierce forest fire bearing down on her house was given only minutes to gather her most important belongings.   She first grabbed for her poodle, then scurried to gather heirloom jewelry and family photos.  These things, she said, could never be replaced.  Family history meant more to her than all the material goods she had accumulated.

Born in the nineteenth century, the country photographer Calvin Davis, also understood the importance of preserving personal history. A good-natured man, he traveled throughout Christian County, Missouri, lugging his bulky box camera in the back of a horse-drawn buggy.  He traversed the mountains and the Wilderness Road, entering townships such as Nixa, Clever, Boaz, Riverdale, Sparta, and Delaware Town, to capture in still-frame an inestimable legacy of Ozark life. 

Davis had a knack for getting common hard-working folk to stop their daily affairs long enough to pose for a picture.  In his online exhibit, found at www.boaz1910.com, folks are seen proudly exhibiting a new set of mules, or smiling before a newly whitewashed barn.  One photo is of a congregation who gathered at a pond for a baptism; another, a reunion, when a family came together for a day and shared a fishing hole.  Family-worked businesses such as a sorghum mill or hillside farms often captured Davis’ eye as points of interest for photos.  

Little has been written about the unassuming pioneer photographer.  It was hard even to find published the year in which he was born, though I was able to deduce it by knowing he was 55 years old at the turn of the century, and that he died, nearly blind, in 1927 at the age of 82.  Nor could I find the city of his birth. 

It is evident, though, that he was an astute businessman.  A sign displaying his name and occupation graced the side of the buggy that carried his camera through town and countryside.  He was known as, “Calvin Davis, Traveling Photographer”, a label even marking the backs of some of his photos.

As a young man during the Civil War, he served as a locomotive fireman.  On one occasion, he ran an engine into Vicksburg, firing for the Vicksburg-Meridian Road, despite Grant’s forces nearby.  The rest of the crew had already fled, as had the engineer, who ordered Davis to stay with the engine until he came back.  For two hours, Davis waited.  The bullets of battle whipped through the air all around him.  Finally when the shots began to hit the engine, he determined to get out of there.  He started the engine and drove it forward several miles until he could get off and flee to the city. 

In 1869, while working for the Frisco lines, he brought old engine No. 6, made by the Roger Locomotive people, into Springfield for the first time.  Using stacks of firewood placed alongside either side of the tracks as fuel for his wood-burning engine, he proudly steamed it into town.  At that time, Springfield was not much more than woods. Imagine the excitement of the locals upon seeing the innovative machine.

Before he died in 1927, the kindly white-haired Davis lived at the Biggs Hotel on Commerce Street in Springfield, still sharing his stories with any who would listen.  Though “blind as a bat” as he put it, his enthusiasm for life was not dampened.  Good-naturedly he would invite any who could to come and hear his stories of the good old days.  “I can’t read or write,” he said, “but I can talk.  And I like visitors.”  We should all be so obliging. 

As this complicated world spins at seeming breakneck speed, may we, as he did, take a moment to stop and reflect on what makes our world special.  Ponder on what caused our child to laugh out loud.  Or, note what made our neighbor punch his thumbs under his armpits and swell out his chest with pride.  Then snap a picture.  Perhaps someone in a future time will find our photo and smile, and it will enhance their personal history.

While it has been said that our life is our best adventure, when a way of life is captured and preserved through the poetic eyes of a fanciful country photographer like Calvin Davis, we can all be affably touched by another’s.