Important Collection of Letters and Photographs – Photography Department of the "American Colony" in Jerusalem

Important Collection of Letters and Photographs – Photography Department of the "American Colony" in Jerusalem
Remarkable, one-of-a-kind collection of photographs and letters by photographers of the photography department of the American Colony in Jerusalem, dating from the first three decades of the 20th century.
The collection includes:
* An album containing 469 photographs taken by American Colony photographers during the years 1898-1929, amongst them personal images from the period of American Colony members, portraying life in the colony and in late 19th, early 20th-century Jerusalem, up to 1929. The album opens with six color photographs, including a panorama of the Old City of Jerusalem and photos of the area of the American Colony. The majority of the images were taken in Eretz Israel and just a few are from Egypt and Jordan.
The album, which was presented as a gift to the Baptist Minister Stephen D. Pyle (1888-1969), is hand-made with a leather binding. The front cover is etched with the text "Palestine 1924-1929." The photographs are attached to the album's leaves. Attached are six index leaves, typewritten with annotations for 315 of the photographs. The dimensions of most of the photographs is 11.5x8.5 cm. Album 33.5x26 cm. Good condition.
* Twenty-five letters, photographs and photographed greeting cards, dated 1924-1925 and 1927. These include handwritten letters (some consisting of several leaves) sent by American Colony members to Rev. Stephen Donald Pyle, Baptist Minister in Rock Springs, Wyoming. Most of the letters were written by Jacob Eliahu Spafford and two are by Eric Matson. Amongst them three Shana Tova greetings, printed and accompanied by American Colony photographs. The content of the letters has not been published to date and was not thoroughly researched.
Jacob Eliahu Spafford (1864-1932) was the adopted son of the couple Horatio and Anna Spafford, amongst the founders of the American Colony in Jerusalem. His biological parents were Sephardi Jews from Jerusalem who arrived in Palestine from Turkey and were among the first Jews in Jerusalem converted by the "London Mission Society for spreading Christianity among Jews". Jacob Eliahu was born in Ramalla to where his parents fled during the cholera epidemic in Jerusalem. In 1883 he was officially adopted by the Spaffords and later took on their name. As a Spafford family member, Jacob undertook much responsibility as far as the Colony's matters were concerned. He was reknown as an intelligent person with a mastery of foreign languages: he was fluent in five languages and had partial knowledge of others. Jacob's interest in archaeology led him to the discovery of the Shiloach Script in 1880. (For additional information about him, see "Our Jerusalem, An American Family in the Holy City, 1881-1949, Bertha Spafford Veste"; translated and edited by Eli Shiller, Ariel/Regev Publishers, 1992.)
G.E. Eric Matson, 1888-1977 was one of the leading photographers of the American Colony. Born in Sweden, Matson joined the American Colony in 1896. While still a young boy he worked in the dark-room of the American Colony photography department where he met his future wife. The Matsons contributed significantly to the development of the colony's photography technology. Among other innovations Matson developed a technique for coloring photographs with oil paint after they had been developed; he initiated the use of stereoscopic cameras to take three-dimensional photographs, and produced aerial photographs. Starting in 1934, Matson directed the photography department, the photographs of which were sold in the "Matson Photo Service" store at the Fast Hotel in Jerusalem. In 1946 the Matson family left Jerusalem and moved to California.
The American Colony in Jerusalem was founded in 1881, with the arrival from Chicago of the wealthy couple Horatio and Anna Spafford. Several years later the Spaffords purchased the Rabah Effendi house in Sheikh Jarakh in Jerusalem (known today as the American Colony Hotel), where the community led its life for almost one hundred years. A chain of personal disasters suffered by the Spaffords on their way from Chicago to Palestine – including a fire which burnt their property in Chicago, the drowning of the boat on which Anna traveled with her four children and the resulting death of the children, and the the death of their baby in the epidemic – led them to search for a new way of life. When the colony was established in Jerusalem, their hope was to lead a Christian religious commune life, while doing voluntary philanthropic work for the city's inhabitants. Because they had no missionary intentions, the colony members gained the trust of local Christians, Moslems and Jews. In 1896 the population of the colony was bolstered by a group of tens of members of the Swedish Evangelist community from Chicago and Sweden, who mastered agricultural and professional skills and contributed to the development of the small community.
In 1898 Meyers and Vester established a photography studio at the colony with equipment and materials brought in from America. Until that day there had been no similar enterprise in Jerusalem. The studio's first photographic project was the documentation of the visit to Palestine by the Austro-Hungarian Emperor Wilhelm II . The photographs of the visit drew much attention and were sold with much success to the public, with the resulting income greatly helping the colony's economy. Following this successful project, the colony further developed their photography department and during the first half of the 20th century its photographers produced an extremely important collection of photographs, documenting Eretz Israel, its sites and antiquities, its landscapes and people of all religions. American Colony photographers also documented many of the most important events of the period, via professional images of very high quality. In the 1960s the collection of Eric and Edith Matson was donated to the American Library of Congress.