1890s Houlton Maine Butcher Shop Cabinet Photo Monson & Son Estabrooke RARE For Sale

Exceptional original cabinet photograph showing the interior of a late-19th-century butcher/meat market in Houlton, Aroostook County, Maine, photographed by noted Houlton photographer Thomas S. Estabrooke (1835–1921).The business has been identified through period research as Laurel Monson & Son / Monson’s Market. Laurel Monson established his Houlton business in the 1860s, and his son A. Beecher Monson joined him in the late 1880s.The photograph appears to show Laurel Monson and his son A. Beecher Monson, together with another person in the market.This is an unusually detailed occupational interior rather than a conventional studio portrait. Visible throughout the photograph are an extraordinary array of period butcher-shop details, including:• Large wooden sales counter
• Open business ledger
• Commercial balance/weighing scales
• Butcher holding a large knife over a cut of meat
• Hanging carcasses and cuts of meat
• Dressed poultry
• Sausages and other prepared meats
• Numerous hooks, tools and fixtures of a working 19th-century meat marketThe photographic mount is clearly marked “ESTABROOKE — HOULTON, ME.”THE PHOTOGRAPHERThomas Sherman Estabrooke was a Civil War veteran and longtime professional photographer in Houlton. His work is documented in institutional photographic collections; Yale’s Beinecke Library, for example, holds Thomas S. Estabrooke photographs in the Meserve-Kunhardt Collection.Estabrooke also belonged to a noteworthy family associated with early photography. His brother Edward M. Estabrooke became particularly well known for his work with the ferrotype/tintype process and authored the important 19th-century photographic manual The Ferrotype and How to Make It.THE MONSON FAMILYThe younger proprietor, A. Beecher Monson, later married Annie Louise Gilman. Their children included Hollis Monson and daughter Gertrude Gilman Monson, adding a particularly useful genealogical connection for researchers of the Monson family and Houlton history.This photograph therefore has several overlapping areas of collecting interest: Maine history, Houlton history, Aroostook County, occupational photography, butcher and meat-market history, early commercial interiors, the Monson family, and the Estabrooke photographic family.A remarkably evocative surviving image of a working Maine business more than a century ago.Condition: Original antique photograph with age-related wear consistent with its approximately 130-year age. Please examine all photographs carefully for exact condition.Guaranteed original period photograph — not a reproduction.An exceptional opportunity for a Maine historical collection, occupational-photography collection, museum/archive, or collector of 19th-century American commercial photography.