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Lot 255
Sale 6431 - American Historical Ephemera & Early Photography Online
Lots Open
Nov 11, 2025
Lots Close
Nov 24, 2025
Timed Online / Cincinnati
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Estimate
$100 -
200
Lot Description
[EARLY PHOTOGRAPHY]. Image of "Swamp Lodge," Philadelphia & Erie Railway Engineers Qtrs. Ca 1880s.
8 3/4 x 6 1/2 in. albumen photograph on 9 1/2 x 8 in. cardstock mount featuring lightly penciled inscription: "Swamp Lodge. / Imbrie Miller / Engineers Quarters. Phila & Erie Ry." Pictured is a log cabin in a large clearing, showing people looking out of the windows and doorway. Other people, including a child, stand on a log pathway to the right side of the structure.
Though we could find no other images of "Swamp Lodge," the structure is referenced in William Bender Wilson's History of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company (Philadelphia: Henry T. Coates & Co., 1899). He writes of Frank J. Firth, once an Assistant Engineer for the Philadelphia and Erie Railroad: "Subsequently he removed to Swamp Lodge, an engineers camp in the woods beyond the present location of Kane, and took charge of the construction of Summit Division of Philadelphia and Erie Railroad."

