From left to right: Charles Chambers, James McGovern and Frank Watters
It was on this date 140 years ago — Sept. 10, 1883 — that the first arrests were made in connection to a counterfeiting operation at a Duluth grocery store.
The Library of Congress has cabinet-card photos of the three men, which were acquired in 2018 at a rare book and photograph shop and were part of the “William Kennoch collection of U.S. Secret Service photographs.”
Why did three counterfeiters have their photos taken at a studio and why were those photos kept together and passed around for a century? Perhaps in 1883 police departments didn’t have mugshot cameras and instead hired professional photographers like Duluth’s Paul B. Gaylord, whose surname appears on all three cards. And then the Secret Service took possession and so on?
Below is an Aug. 8, 1883 newspaper advertisement (via garon.us) for Charles Chambers’ grocery store in Duluth.
