Stanley J. Morrow chronicled Dakota Territory through his photographs of American Indians, army soldiers, and early settlements, leaving behind a significant historical record.
Born 3 May 1843 in Ohio, Morrow spent most of his childhood in Wisconsin. At the age of eighteen, he joined the Seventh Wisconsin Infantry Regiment at the outbreak of the Civil War and witnessed some of the conflict’s bloodiest battles. After being reassigned to guard duty at Point Lookout Prison in Maryland, Morrow trained as a photographer under the tutelage of Mathew B. Brady.
In 1864, Morrow left the army and returned to Wisconsin where he married Isa Ketchum the following year. Three years later, the couple left for Dakota Territory and settled in Yankton. As one of the few professionally trained photographers in the territory, Morrow quickly garnered local business. He made connections with local army posts that allowed him to travel the territory, photographing military personnel as well as local American Indians. Morrow captured images of numerous famed Lakota leaders, including Spotted Tail and Red Cloud. He also photographed some of the last permanent earthen structures of the Mandas, Hidatsas, and Arikaras and documented the traditional customs, garb, and tipis of other Northern Plains Indians.
In July 1876, Morrow arrived in Deadwood and spent the next five months documenting life in the gold-rush town. During his time there, he joined a relief team for Major General George Crook’s Bighorn and Yellowstone Expedition, which had run out of food and resorted to eating their horses and mules. After the starving troopers had been fed, Morrow convinced some of the soldiers to reenact the harrowing experience, photographing their staged actions. The following year, he recorded the work of a team of soldiers who reinterred the remains of those who had died at the Battle of the Little Bighorn. In 1881, Morrow documented the Great Flood of the Missouri River that destroyed many of the homes and businesses in the Yankton area.
Two years later, Morrow took his family to Florida, seeking help for his wife’s health ailments. Morrow continued his photography career there and traveled throughout the South. Sometime after 1888, he settled in Dallas, Texas, where he died on 10 December 1921. He was buried in the city’s Greenwood Cemetery.