George Smith Cook (23 February 1819–27 November 1902), photographer, was born in Stratford, Connecticut. The names of his parents are not known. He was orphaned at an early age and grew up in Newark, New Jersey, under the care of his maternal grandmother. At age fourteen Cook traveled to the Ohio River and during the next several years worked his way south along the Mississippi River. He had arrived in New Orleans by early in 1838 and there began painting portrait miniatures. Following the invention of the daguerreotype in 1839, Cook studied the technique of capturing photographic images on copper plates and began managing a gallery early in the 1840s. He returned to Newark in 1845, continued to work as a daguerreotypist, and in September 1846 married Elizabeth Smith Francisco. They had one son and one daughter. Embarking with his family on a three-year trek through the South, Cook set up temporary studios in a succession of towns in Missouri, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia. In most places he trained successors to take charge of the studios, to which he continued to sell photographic supplies and through which he fostered a network of contacts across the region.
In October 1849 Cook settled his family in Charleston, South Carolina, where he established a permanent studio and earned a reputation as one of the country's leading photographers. He finished his photographs with pencil to lend flesh tones to his subjects and brighter hues to his backgrounds. Cook retained his northern ties, and during the summer of 1851 Mathew B. Brady invited him to manage his New York gallery while he traveled in Europe. Cook purchased his own competing gallery at the same time, but after Brady's return in May 1852 Cook went back to Charleston. A successful and compelling portraitist, he also enjoyed a lucrative business selling supplies out of his King Street studio. Cook learned the new wet-plate process of photography during the 1850s and by 1855 was producing photographs, stereographs, and cartes de visite, many of which were purchased and widely sold by E. and H. T. Anthony and Company of New York. He opened studios in Chicago and Philadelphia and often traveled to both cities between 1857 and 1860, but he closed these galleries in the latter year partly as a result of the growing conflict between the North and South.
During the Civil War, Cook served in the home guard and continued to practice his craft. He successfully smuggled supplies through the blockade and accepted payment for his work only in gold. Cook produced numerous images of troops, prisoners, military installations, battles, and the resulting destruction in the vicinity of Charleston, especially at Fort Sumter. His carte de visite of the fort's Union commander, photographed in February 1861, sold by the thousands that spring. During the battle in Charleston Harbor in September 1863 Cook set up his camera on a parapet at Fort Sumter and took pictures under hostile fire. His image of an exploding shell became one of his best-known photographs (though it was likely the result of significant retouching), and he was the first to photograph Union ironclad gunboats in action.
Early in 1864 Cook moved his family to what he hoped would be a safer location near Columbia, where his wife died that April. He stored much of his equipment, along with negatives and records, in a temporary gallery in that city but lost them all in the fire that destroyed Columbia in February 1865. Soon after the end of the war Cook returned to Charleston and reopened his studio. He resumed his trips to Newark to visit family members and there on 24 September 1866 married Lavinia Elizabeth Pratt, his first wife's niece. They had one daughter and one son, Huestis Pratt Cook, who also became a well-known photographer. Cook opened and briefly ran a gallery in New York City in 1873–1874 while continuing to operate his Charleston studio through the 1870s.
On 30 April 1880 Cook purchased for $3,500 David H. Anderson's Virginia photographic studio, equipment, decorative backdrops, and about 20,000 glass-plate negatives, including Anderson's wartime portraits of Confederate officers and officeholders. Cook moved to Richmond soon afterward and opened for business on East Main Street. He eventually settled his family in Bon Air, Chesterfield County, just across the James River from Richmond. Again he mastered a new technique, the recently developed dry-plate process for making photographs. Known as a careful photographer, Cook offered his clients three sittings for a portrait and refused payment until the sitter was satisfied with the result. He sought out and purchased collections of negatives from other city studios, most significantly those of the Lee Gallery and of Vannerson and Jones, which he preserved, cataloged, and occasionally published. In August 1890 Cook was recognized at the annual convention of the Photographers' Association of America, held in Washington, D.C. The following year he closed his Charleston studio, which his elder son had been managing, and turned over the day-to-day operation of the family business in Richmond to his younger son, although Cook continued to spend time in the studio until his death.
George Smith Cook died at his Bon Air home on 27 November 1902, two days after suffering a stroke. He was buried in Richmond's Hollywood Cemetery. Cook's images have appeared in numerous books, exhibitions, and documentaries, beginning with Francis Trevelyan Miller's ten-volume Photographic History of the Civil War (1911). In 1946 and 1954 the Valentine Museum purchased the vast Cook Collection of photographs and negatives, representing Cook's work and that of his sons George LaGrange Cook and Huestis Pratt Cook, as well as the historical images they had acquired from other studios. The collection remains an unparalleled source of images documenting the Civil War and the history of the Richmond region from the 1860s through early in the twentieth century.
Sources Consulted:
Biographies in A. Lawrence Kocher and Howard Dearstyne, Shadows in Silver: A Record of Virginia, 1850–1900, in Contemporary Photographs taken by George and Huestis Cook with Additions from the Cook Collection (1954), 3–15, Conley L. Edwards III, "'The Photographer of the Confederacy,'" Civil War Times Illustrated 13 (June 1974): 27–33, Thomas J. Peach, "George Smith Cook: South Carolina's Premier Civil War Photojournalist" (M.A. thesis, University of South Carolina, 1982), and Jack C. Ramsay, Jr., Photographer … Under Fire: The Story of George S. Cook (1819–1902) (1994), with birth and marriage dates and other family information from Cook documents in private collection and several portraits; George S. Cook Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. and The Valentine Museum, Richmond; Richmond City Chancery Court Deed Book, 116A:301–302; Washington Post, 7 Apr. 1882; Richmond Times-Dispatch, 28 Nov. 1952; New York Times, 7 Dec. 1952; Richmond News Leader, 14 Oct. 1954; A. D. Cohen, "George S. Cook and the Daguerrean Art," Photographic Art-Journal 1 (May 1851): 285–287; "How Business Is, and What of It," Philadelphia Photographer 17 (Feb. 1880): 34–35; Francis Trevelyan Miller, ed., The Photographic History of the Civil War (1911), esp. 1:24, 99–101, 3:169–174, 6:267, 8:131; Bob Zeller, "September 8th, 1863: A Momentous Day in the History of Photography," Military Images 19 (Nov./Dec. 1997): 8–16, 37; Harvey S. Teal, Partners with the Sun: South Carolina Photographers, 1840–1940 (2000), esp. 22–26, 43–48, 88–94, 270–271; death notice in Washington Post, 28 Nov. 1902; obituaries in Richmond Dispatch, 28 Nov. 1902 and Richmond Times, 28 Nov. 1902.