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Lee Moorhouse photographs

 Collection
Identifier: PH 036

Scope and Contents

This collection consists of approximately 6,500 glass-plate negatives. Moorhouse also acquired negatives from other photographers including O.G. Allen, W.S. Bowman, C. Moore, Frank H. Nowell, and Thomas H. Rutter, in some cases replacing the photographer's name with his own. The images are arranged by the photographer's number. In cases where the photographer's number was a duplicate, a substitute unique identifier has been assigned. There is a small group of copy prints and several vintage prints. The collection also contains a cursory photographer's logbook and an automobile mirror imprinted with advertising for Moorhouse's insurance business.

The Moorhouse collection was inventoried as a WPA project. (There are entertaining messages from the clerk who performed the inventory and complained about working in the basement of the house while the residents tromped about upstairs.) While the bulk of the negatives are at the University of Oregon, about 150 images of tribal peoples were chosen for what is now the National Anthropological Archives and portraits of the townspeople of Pendleton were given to the Umatilla County Historical Society. The Moorhouse home burned to the ground in later years, destroying most of the photographer's documentation.

The primary importance of the Moorhouse collection is its depictions of tribal people: Cayuse,Yakama, Umatilla, Colville, Walla Walla, Palouse, Wisham, Warm Springs, Nez Perce, Flathead, Bannock, and Crow. While the portraits posed in front of the blanket backdrop are suspect due to his provision of regalia and artifacts from his "curio" collection, the reservation images are more valuable documents. Members of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla and the Tamastslikt Cultural Center have used the images for historical purposes and to identify tribal artifacts now scattered to museums and private collections.

The remainder of the images documents the economy, landscape and events of Umatilla County and the region. Moorhouse also traveled to Portland, for the national Elks convention, and in 1901 went to the site of the Little Bighorn to view the battlefield.

Dates

  • Creation: 1880-1920

Creator

Conditions Governing Access

Collection is open to the public.

Collection must be used in Special Collections & University Archives Reading Room.

The entire collection of glass-plate negatives has been digitized and is available on-line. Access to the negatives is restricted for preservation purposes.

Physical Access

Glass plate negatives and lantern slides are restricted due to the fragility of the format. All decisions regarding use will be at the discretion of the curator for visual materials.

Conditions Governing Use

Property rights reside with Special Collections & University Archives, University of Oregon Libraries. Copyright resides with the creators of the documents or their heirs. All requests for permission to publish collection materials must be submitted to Special Collections & University Archives. The reader must also obtain permission of the copyright holder.

Archival material may contain materials with sensitive or confidential information that is protected under federal and/or state right to privacy laws and other regulations.

Researchers are advised that the disclosure of certain information pertaining to identifiable living individuals represented in this collection without the consent of those individuals may have legal ramifications (e.g. a cause of action for invasion of privacy may arise if facts concerning an individual's private life are published that would be deemed highly offensive to a reasonable person) for which the University of Oregon assumes no responsibility.

If a researcher finds sensitive personal information in a collection, please bring it to the attention of the reading room staff.

Biographical / Historical

Thomas Leander "Lee" Moorhouse was born Feb. 28, 1850 in Marion County, Iowa. In 1861 the family emigrated on the Oregon Trail to Walla Walla, WA; Moorhouse spent the first year living with the Henry Bowman family, acquaintances from Iowa, in the Pendleton vicinity. He attended Whitman Seminary in Walla Walla. As a young man he traveled and worked throughout the west, prospecting in Boise, breaking horses in Helena, and droving cattle in Nevada. He studied at a Portland business college briefly.

Moorhouse returned to the Pendleton area in 1874, first using his surveying skills from the Oregon & California railway on behalf of the county. He was then employed by Lot Livermore, a prominent merchant. Moorhouse married Sara Ella Willis in 1876 and the couple moved to Umatilla Landing. He served as a field secretary to the governor during the Bannock War, and from 1879-1883 was assistant adjutant general of the third brigade of the Oregon State Militia. The rank of "major" stayed with him for the rest of his life.

Lee Moorhouse was a stockholder in Prospect Farm, near Stanfield, and served as its manager. From there Moorhouse went back to Pendleton and joined Livermore in the Lee Moorhouse and Company General Store. In 1889 Moorhouse became Agent for the Umatilla Indian Reservation. He oversaw a survey of the land, allotment to individual tribe members, and sale of the "surplus" land under the 1891 Allotment Act. Returning to business in 1891 he brokered wheat for a while and then entered into insurance sales. Moorhouse was very active in civic work in Pendleton, serving as mayor in 1885 and as treasurer and surveyor in 1888. He was a member of the Elks and active in the Repulbican party. Lee Moorhouse served on the Oregon Geographic Names board for several years. He was admitted to the Oregon Bar in 1900 but never practiced law. He served as clerk of the Eastern Division of the Oregon Supreme Court from 1901-1926. .

Lee Moorhouse was interested in photography early in life, possibly learning from Henry Bowman's cousin, professional photographer W.S. Bowman, and he served as president of the Pendleton Camera Club for several years. Moorhouse became a passionate and prolific photographer in the 1880s, photographing the people and events of the city of Pendleton, visiting the reservation, and making portraits of tribal members in the backyard of his home. During his life he also assembled a collection of Native American artifacts--baskets, weapons, regalia, bags and horse trappings--from a variety of tribal cultures. He exhibited the collection at local fairs and used it to adorn the tribal members who came to sit for photographs; many of the images in the collection contain a mixture of artifacts from different Native tribes.

Moorhouse considered himself an amateur, but mastered the equipment of professional photographers: gelatin dry glass-plate negatives, large cameras, and a tripod. His work appeared on postcards and in many publications. In addition to his work on the reservation and his composed tribal portraits, Lee Moorhouse was an enthusiastic participant and documenter of progress and events in the region.

Lee Moorhouse had three daughters (Celestine "Lessie", Augusta "Gussie" and LaVelle) and a son, Mark. Mark Moorhouse was a founder of the Pendleton Roundup. Lee Moorhouse died Jun.1, 1926.

Extent

100.5 linear feet (319 containers)

Language of Materials

English

Abstract

Thomas Leander "Lee" Moorhouse (1850-1926) was a photographer and businessman in Pendleton, Oregon. From 1888 to 1916 he produced over 9,000 images documenting urban, rural, and Native American life in the Columbia Basin and Umatilla County, Oregon. The collection consists primarily of glass-plate negatives.

Immediate Source of Acquisition

Gift of the Moorhouse family in 1938.

Existence and Location of Copies

Selected items are available online in the Lee Moorhouse photographs, 1888-1916 and the Picturing the Cayuse, Walla Walla, and Umatilla Tribes in Oregon Digital.

Related Materials

This collection forms part of the Pendleton Group, a series of photograph collections from the Pendleton area, 1880s-1940s. Images from certain photographers, such as Moorhouse, may be found in many of these collections. The Pendleton Group includes the Lee Drake photographs (PH021), the Charles W. Furlong photographs (PH244), the Walter S. Bowman photographs (PH004), and the Electric Studio/O.G. Allen photographs (PH033). Related images are included in the photographs of Park Weed Willis, Moorhouse's brother-in-law (PH288). The Lee Moorhouse papers consist of a few letters (A 082). The National Anthropological Archives holds negatives of tribal people, selected during the WPA survey. Following Moorhouse's death, the family donated negatives of portraits of the townspeople of Pendleton to the Umatilla County Historical Society. Many repositories in the Northwest hold vintage prints of Moorhouse images, which he gave to his sitters. The Curio collection was partially dispersed; the remnants are now in the collection of Tamastslikt Cultural Center.

Physical Description

319 boxes, including 295 boxes of glass-plate negatives

Processing Information

Collection processed by Steven Worthington and Normandy S. Helmer.

This finding aid may be updated periodically to account for new acquisitions to the collection and/or revisions in arrangement and description.

The Moorhouse negative descriptions are based on a database that was assembled over several decades. Titles are transcribed from the negatives when possible. Additional information is enclosed in square brackets. Please be aware that names, particularly tribal ones, have generally not been regularized and Moorhouse's notes on tribal affiliation are highly variable.

In preparation for digitization, each image was physically inspected and compared to the description in the database; descriptions were updated and corrected as necessary and condition information for the original glass was added. Where possible, the photographer's original number has been retained as the unique identifier for an image. In some cases duplicate numbers existed; when this happened staff assigned a new unique identifier to the image and retained the old identification information in individual notes for each image.

Subject

Title
Guide to the Lee Moorhouse Photographs
Status
Complete Description
Author
Steven Worthington, Normandy S. Helmer, and Kira B. Homo
Date
2013
Description rules
Describing Archives: A Content Standard
Language of description
English
Script of description
Latin
Language of description note
Finding aid written in English.

Repository Details

Part of the University of Oregon Libraries, Special Collections and University Archives Repository

Contact:
1299 University of Oregon
Eugene OR 97403-1299 USA