Solomon D. Butcher | |
|---|---|
 Butcher, ca. 1901 | |
| Born | January 24, 1856 |
| Died | March 18, 1927 (aged 71) |
| Occupation | Photographer |
| Known for | Photographs of Nebraska homesteaders |
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Solomon D. Butcher (January 24, 1856 – March 18, 1927) was an itinerant photographer who spent most of his life in central Nebraska, in the Great Plains region of the United States. A settler under the Homestead Act, he began in 1886 to produce a photographic record of the history of settlement in the region in the region including some of a small group of African Americans in Cherry County around the majority black town of Dinwiddy. Over 3,000 of his negatives survive; more than 1,000 of these depict sod houses. Butcher wrote two books incorporating his photographs: Pioneer History of Custer County and Short Sketches of Early Days in Nebraska (1901), and Sod Houses, or the Development of the Great American Plains (1904).
Butcher was unable to achieve financial success as a farmer, as a photographer, or in a number of other schemes later in his life, and at the time of his death felt that he had been a failure. However, the number and scope of his photographs of Nebraska pioneer life have made them a valuable resource to students of that period of history, and they have become a staple of historical texts and popular works alike. His oeuvre has been described as "the most important chronicle of the saga of homesteading in America".[1]