Biscoe frequently used the vantage points of attic windows to photograph the area. This photo east from his Front Street home shows the towers of Erwin Hall, the old Baptist Church, Marietta City Hall, and the Unitarian Church. They are behind the Central House, which once stood at 335 Second S. (Photo Provided)

Thomas Dwight Biscoe was a professor of sciences at Marietta College in the late 1800s. Born in Massachusetts, educated at Amherst, he joined the faculty of Marietta College in 1874. His most lasting legacy, however, is not in what he taught, but in what he took. 

Biscoe recorded some of the oldest surviving images of Marietta, capturing scenes of the century-old town while it was still working to establish the infrastructure that would make it a community that would last. 

Photography was a hobby for Biscoe, because of his scientific training he recorded detailed information about the exposures of many of the images, letting future generations know not only exactly when and where the photos were taken, but also information about the exposures themselves.  

“Thomas Biscoe was an amateur photographer, so his subjects were photographed out of personal interest, rather than for commercial or professional reasons. He captured moments of daily life in the local people and scenes of the late 19th and early 20th centuries,” said Linda Showalter, special collections associate at Marietta College’s Legacy Library. “In many cases, Biscoe left detailed records describing his subject, the weather, the time of day, and the settings of his camera.” 

Photos in the 1800s were taken on glass plates.The process was difficult, with Biscoe preparing the emulsion on the plates before taking the photo. Because the plates were not as sensitive to light as future films, they required extremely long exposures. Many of his photos had exposures as long as 60 seconds. 

Harmar Hill can be seen behind a school house located on Third Street near Scammel Street during the Spring of 1880. The building contains a business today.  (Photo Provided)

More than 200 of his Marietta area photos survive and have been digitized as part of an overall collection that also includes photos of his travels east to Civil War battlefields. The entire collection is available to the public on the website for Marietta College’s Special Collections, where the original glass plates are safely stored.  

Many of the structures he photographed survive to the current day, allowing modern viewers to see how much Marietta has changed while in a lot of instances, staying much the same. 

Biscoe’s photos provide a unique glimpse back to a time in Marietta’s history from long before anyone alive in the city today can remember.

A steamboat under construction slides into the Ohio River from the Capt. William Knox and Sons, shipyard in Harmar. (Photo Provided)

Sacra Via park as viewed from Harmar Hill, likely in the summer of 1891, show a lumber yard near the south end of what is today the Marietta Boat Club. Where the park is today was crisscrossed with a number of dirt roads.   (Photo Provided)

This photo from around 1880 shows the Muskingum River in a state of transition. Work had begun on a new lock at the east side of the river while the locks on the west side that were built in 1841 were still intact. The photo shows a damaged dam that allowed the river to flow by unconstrained. An early version of the Putnam Bridge can be seen on the left side of the photo, including an unusual swing span. At the bottom left a person can been hanging laundry on a clothes line.  (Photo Provided)

Five women in a buggy head along a dirt road on their way to Watertown in this photo taken late in the afternoon on Oct. 24, 1901. The shadow of Biscoe can be seen at the bottom of the photo.  (Photo Provided)

Thomas Biscoe lived in the center of these three homes on Front Street across from Muskingum Park. The two on the left have been joined by a third structure and are now part of the Cawley and Peoples Funeral Home complex. This photo was taken on March 10, 1881, at 3 pm. The exposure for the photo took nearly a minute. (Photo Provided)  

Thomas Biscoe on April 13, 1883.  (Photo Provided)