Beals, Jessie Tarbox

JTB was the first American woman photojournalist. She was born in Hamilton, Ontario, on December 23, 1870, the daughter of Marie Antoinette (Bassett) Tarbox and John Nathaniel Tarbox. Her father, an inventor and entrepreneur, failed in business and JTB, after completing her education at the Collegiate Institute of Ontario, took a teaching position in Williamsburg, Massachusetts, in 1888. That same year she acquired her first camera, and in 1889 established Williamsburg's first photography studio on the front lawn of her house, using her weekends to take pictures of friends, students, family groups, barns, houses, and animals. In the fall of 1893 she moved to Greenfield, Massachusetts, to take up a new teaching position. There she met Alfred Tennyson Beals, whom she married in 1897.

In 1900, convinced that she could make a successful career out of her hobby, JTB gave up teaching and started traveling as an itinerant photographer, with ATB as her assistant. In 1901 the couple moved to Buffalo and JTB joined the Buffalo Enquirer and Courier as staff photographer. She took hundreds of photographs of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition (World's Fair) in 1904, and the following year covered President Roosevelt's Rough Riders' Reunion in San Antonio, Texas.

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