Emma Sewall - 1836-1919

Born into a Bath shipbuilding family, the Crookers, Emma attended Bath schools and completed her education at Ipswich Female Seminary in Ipswich, MA. In 1859, she married Arthur Sewall - she was 23 and he was 24. They had two sons. The Sewall shipbuilding firm was the most prolific in Bath history, building over 100 ships during its lifetime and was one of the few to make the transition from wood to steel ships. Her obituary said, “She was a woman of quiet and refined tastes, who for years made her home a true center of culture and society.” She took up photography in 1884 and was invited to join the prestigious Boston Camera Club in 1894, one of the first women, and one its oldest members.

Emma and her niece and companion, Alice Cutler, outside the Sewall mansion on Washington Street in Bath.

Primary Source 1

“Fisherman’s Children” 1886. Click to see an album of Emma Sewall’s photography.

Additional Primary Sources

2. Exhibiting her work

From Emma’s scrapbook. The Postal Photographic Club (Fitchburg, MA) was the first one she joined; her success there led to the invitation to join the prestigious Boston Camera Club.

A newspaper clipping of a review of the work Emma displayed in Boston, 1895. The clipping is part of a scrapbook of clippings she collected, primarily of news articles about her husband and sons’ public lives. The scrapbook is in the Maine Maritime Museum’s collections.

3. An c. 1900 photo of a woman photographer in the field