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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 white settlement in the region. 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".〔 ==Early life== Solomon D. Butcher〔 was born on January 24, 1856, the oldest child of Thomas Jefferson Butcher and Esther (Ullom) Butcher, in Burton in Wetzel County, in what was then the state of Virginia but later became part of West Virginia. In 1860, his family moved to LaSalle County, Illinois, where his father worked for the Illinois Central Railroad.〔〔 The family remained there for nearly twenty years. Butcher finished high school in 1874 and was briefly apprenticed to a tintypist, who taught him the business of photography. In the winter term of 1875–76, he attended the Henry Military School in Henry, Illinois. He then worked as a travelling salesman for a firm in Clyde, Ohio until 1880.〔〔 In 1880, Thomas Jefferson Butcher announced that he was leaving his secure job with the railroad and moving west, to establish a homestead in Custer County, Nebraska.〔 Although Solomon Butcher had a good job, he had grown tired of his work, and "had already thought seriously of seeking my fortune in the great west".〔 In March 1880, a party consisting of Butcher, his father, his brother George, and his brother-in-law J. R. Wabel started westward in two covered wagons. After seven weeks, they arrived in northeastern Custer County, where they occupied homesteads near the north bank of the Middle Loup River, west-northwest of present-day Sargent.〔 The party began construction of a sod house, and Butcher quickly came to rue his decision to go west: "I soon came to the conclusion that any man that would leave the luxuries of a boarding house, where they had hash every day, and a salary of $125 a month to lay Nebraska sod for 75 cents a day... was a fool."〔 Upon the completion of the house, Butcher and his father returned to Illinois to bring his mother and his youngest brother to Nebraska. However, Butcher did not return with them: he stayed in Illinois for several months, returning to Nebraska with only three days left to construct a dwelling on his homestead; failure to do so would mean forfeiting his claim. Butcher, his father, and two of his brothers built and occupied a dugout, saving the claim. Two weeks later, however, he once again went back east, moving to Milwaukee, Wisconsin and abandoning his homestead.〔〔 "I would not have remained and kept batch for five years for the whole of Custer county," he declared.〔 Butcher attended medical college in Minneapolis in the winter and spring of 1881–2. There, he met Lillie M. (Barber) Hamilton, a young widow working as a nurse at the hospital. The two were married in May 1882.〔〔〔 Soon thereafter, Butcher once again decided that the West was the place for him. "I had just seen enough of the wild west to unfit me for living contentedly in the East",〔 he wrote. In October 1882, the couple returned to Custer County, where they moved in with his father. During that winter, he worked as a schoolteacher.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Solomon Butcher」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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