Noah Hamilton Rose

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"Apache wikiup, Arizona, 1880." Photograph by NH Rose

Noah Hamilton Rose (April 9, 1874–January 25, 1952) was a printer, photographer, and a collector of photographs of the old West.

The son of a carpenter, Rose was born in Kendall County, Texas; his father moved the family to Menardville (now Menard) when Rose was ten. He began working as an apprentice in the office of the Menardville Monitor at 14. His family later moved to Ballinger where Rose worked on the local paper, but in 1891 he returned to work on the Menardville Record.

He taught himself photography using a small box camera and printing supplies that he had earned as a premium selling subscriptions to a popular family weekly. In 1892, he began working as an itinerant printer and photographer in Sonora, Menardville, Eagle Pass, Del Rio and other small towns in west, central, and north Texas. He supplemented standard portrait work with news photography of events such as the Menardville flood in June, 1899, and the 1902 land rush in Junction.

In 1901, Rose began making slides of his news photographs and exhibiting them the same day. He specialized in hangings, shoot-outs, gunmen, sheriffs, politicians and judges. He began seeking old photographs of noted personalities, and wrote to people such as Emmett Dalton of the Dalton Gang for the purpose. In 1904, he set up a photography studio in Del Rio and worked at building his collection of photographs.

In 1921, Rose moved to San Antonio. After suffering with a long illness and, later, a fractured skull, he found himself in debt for medical bills. He printed a catalogue of the negatives that he had collected, and developed a successful mail-order business selling photographs to magazines and collectors. Pictures of Jesse James, Billy the Kid, Belle Starr, Jim and Bob Younger, and the Dalton gang were most in demand, along with pictures of peace officers, Indians, Texas Rangers, and pioneers. He eventually collected over 2,000 photographs.

Rose published an Album of Gunfighters in 1951. He died in San Antonio after a short illness and was buried in Roselawn Cemetery. His collection of photographs is now in the collection of the University of Oklahoma in Norman.

[edit] Sources

J. Marvin Hunter, "Noah Rose, A Frontier Photographer", Frontier Times, November 1935.
J. Marvin Hunter, "The Passing of a Life-Long Friend", Frontier Times, February 1952.
Oran Warder Nolen, "Noah H. Rose, Frontier Cameraman," Old West, Spring 1968.
Noah Hamilton Rose, A Catalog of the World Famous N. H. Rose Collection of Old Time Photographs of the Frontier (Houston: Frontier Pix, 1952).