James Fitzallen Ryder

James Fitzallen Ryder was born in April 1826 and he grew up in Tompkins County, near Ithaca, New York. He worked for three years as a printer’s apprentice, but met a “Professor” Brightly in 1847 and learned the most rudimentary introduction to daguerreotypy from him. Ryder then worked as an itinerant photographer throughout southwestern New York State, through Pennsylvania, and into Ohio, learning his trade. In the early 1850s Ryder then moved to Elyria, Ohio, and opened a studio there before moving to Cleveland, Ohio in 1852, where he managed Charles E. Johnson’s studio; whom he had met passing through Ithaca years before. Ryder settled in Cleveland, Ohio; and opened his own studio by 1856.