Coming up in THE ENTERPRISING LIFE OF J FRANK: “In the Manner of Burton Holmes”

Three antique glass magic lantern slides, manufactured by the Keystone View Company around the time J. Frank Pickering embarked on his traveling lecture circuit depict turn-of-the century reality in big city America. While not used in J Frank’s shows, these educational slides are similar to some that have been described in newspaper accounts about the Payson publisher’s interests beyond local media. These images show steel framework and completed skyscrapers in New York City, a New Jersey ferryboat as it brings passengers into New York City, and peddlers with carts working their trade along Elizabeth Street, north from Hester, New York. The fourth religious slide depicting a flock of sheep was used by the Interchurch World Movement of North America. The shading on this slide demonstrates its hand-painted effects, akin to those made by J Frank’s daughter Roselle as a child.

“Theaters weren’t so plentiful in those days," Roselle recalled in a newspaper interview that appeared fifty years after traveling with her father J. Frank Pickering on his magic lantern slide shows, “and people loved to hear the lectures.”

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