Through The Lens

Looking at One of New England's Lost Photographers (Day 77)

One of my favorite turn of the last century photographers is Leslie Jones, a Boston Herald-Traveler photographer who worked for that newspaper from 1917 to 1956. You may recall my writing a bit about him in previous stories about Lucky Teter and His Hell Riders.

Leslie photographed some politicians and celebrities - most notably Amelia Earhart - but the reason I like his work so much is because he focused on New England news events and everyday people. He drove everywhere around New England, hauling an enormous amount of photography equipment around with him as you can see from the picture below.

Leslie Jones (c. 1926) from the U Mass Amherst Alton H. Blackington Collection.

Leslie has been on my mind because of a story suggestion made by one of our readers, Pete Ferarro. You all might also know Pete from our story a couple weeks ago about NH plane wrecks. Anyway, Pete made me aware of the incredible survival story of the USS Squalus, a sub that sank off the coast of New Hampshire in 1939. It turns out that Leslie went out there to photograph the dramatic rescue of the survivors. Here’s an incredible shot of that salvage attempt, the doomed sub breaking the surface after the recovery team hooked massive pontoons to the sub to try to bring it up.

And the deeper I looked into the Boston Pubic Library archives of Leslie’s work, the more I discovered how much he had done. He was a portrait photographer for Amelia Earhart, followed President Harding on his vacation in New Hampshire, took photos of the Mount Washington Observatory when it was only a year old, and was on the scene along the coast during the Hurricane of 1938. He visited at least two New Hampshire fire towers that we know of.

Mount Washington Observatory, 1933.

Finally, Leslie spent time in Manchester, my hometown, shooting the infamous Brownies Swim Team as they frolicked in the famous frozen quarry ledges. Most critically, the photo below shows Frederick 'Ted' Leafe leaping into the icy water. Frederick is the grand-dad of one of the city’s most famous residents, writer and historian John Clayton. The Brownies were quite the attraction in their day.

Frederick 'Ted' Leafe leaps from the top of the quarry ledge in the Leslie Jones photo, Circa late 1920s.

Another Leslie Jones shot of the Brownies getting ready to plunge!

So, over the course of the next few months, I’m going to keep coming back to Leslie, not just to tell his story, but to put words to some of the incredible photos in his archive.

Like this one for example, of a group of scientists from Mount Wilson Observatory in California getting a special movie camera ready to track what was called the Great New England Eclipse of 1932.

Many of these sets are simple posted with dates, and maybe a location. Figuring out who is in the shots and what is going on requires a bit more detective work. And that’s the fun!

So look for some of these stories in the next little while and we’ll see if we can tell the story of Leslie Jones, as well as the New Englanders he photographed.

Leslie took this picture of his family at the summit of Mount Kearsarge, 1927.

Housekeeping: If you’d like to learn more about Leslie Jones, I’d recommend checking out the Boston Public Library website on him. Click here and browse: Leslie Ronald Jones.

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