Beals was born in 1870 in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Her father, John Nathaniel Tarbox, was a sewing machine manufacturer, and inventor of the portable sewing machine. Jessie Tarbox Beals moved to Massachusetts when she was 17 to become a teacher, a job she held for roughly 12 years. She got her start in photography by chance, when she won a small camera in a contest. She was immediately intrigued and began taking portraits of local students at a low price. Once she caught the photography bug, Beals never looked back. Her first credited work is in the Vermont newspaper the Windham County Reformer in 1900. In 1902, she was hired as a photographer for two newspapers in Buffalo, New York; The Buffalo Inquirer and The Buffalo Courier.
Beals was no doubt a tough woman, and quite the hustler. She always went the extra mile for her photographs. She did not have one particular focus, and her photos contain a wide number of subjects; such as major events (e.g., the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition), outdoor photography (e.g., houses and gardens), architecture, Greenwich Village, children, and urban poverty. According to the Library of Congress’s own post about her, she carried around a 50-pound (8×10 format) camera for her assignments–definitely not equipment for the faint of heart!

This post is by Gina Modero, Reference Librarian for Printed Collections.
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