Carl Mautz collection of cartes-de-visite photographs created by California photographers

Cartes-de-visite photographs created primarily by photographers in San Francisco and northern California, ca. 1855-1895. Images consist chiefly of portraits depicting children, women, and men, in single, couple, and group sittings. Individuals in the images comprise various ethnic and cultural backgrounds, including Asian American and African American persons. The portraits also include persons with unique physical features, including midgets, dwarves, and giants. Occupations and group memberships represented in the portraits include butchers, circus performers, freemason, miners, musicians, sailors, and soldiers. Other images include portraits of dogs, and copy photographs of drawings, paintings, and dolls

Portraits of identified individuals include Baby Belmont, Frederick Coombs, Tom Coughlan, Tony Denier, Issac Sherwood Halsey, Little Clara Jenkins, Henrietta Lichau, and Eugenie Olanie. Other identified individuals include: Mollie Brown, a bareback somersault horse rider; A. Kerpen, a man with an eight-foot long beard; William Ingraham Kip, first Protestant Episcopal bishop of California; and two scholars in academic gowns, presumably from the University of California, George F. Stone and viticulturist Emmett Rixford

Individual photographers with galleries located in San Francisco include: T. A. Brown, John M. Bryan, Alexander Edouart, Sr., Oscar Foss, John D. Godeus, Thomas Houseworth, Benjamin Franklin Howland, J. Jackson, John Lucas Kingsley, Henry Kruse, Charles Lainer, H. Luther, Charles Albert Marston, George Daniels Morse, Eadweard Muybridge, Silas Wright Selleck, Jacob Shew, William Shew, Joseph Trinidad Silva, Hector William Vaughn, Carleton E. Watkins, John A. Winberg, and Lai Yong

Corporate photographic galleries and partnerships located in San Francisco include: Bayley & Winter, Bradley & Rulofson, Brown & Otto, Chalmers & Wolfe, City Mart Photographic Gallery, Currier & Winter, Edouart & Cobb, Hamilton & Kellogg, Hoebel & Luther, Houston's Excelsior Gallery, I. W. Taber & Company, Lawrence & Houseworth, New York Gallery, Peoples Art Gallery, Watkins' Yosemite Art Gallery, and Wise & Prindle

Individual photographers in other locations throughout California include: Joseph P. Lowe of Auburn; H. H. Frye of Chico; George W. Valleau of Colusa; H. H. Halsey of Dutch Flat; Amasa Plummer Flaglor of Eureka; Ellison Lassell Crawford of Georgetown; S. Johnson of Gilroy; Lewis Jackson Stinson of Marysville; Edward Abraham Kusel of Oroville; L. Dowe and George Ross of Petaluma; Flave H. Gaines of Red Bluff; A. P. Bailey and John A. Todd of Sacramento; James Atkins Clayton of San Jose; H. Schoene of Santa Clara; John E. D. Baldwin of Santa Cruz; John Pitcher Spooner of Stockton; Murry Dunham and James Girard Smith of Vallejo; Issac Sherwood Halsey of Volcano; and Skelton Sanford Noble and B. F. Stevens from unidentified locations

Photographic galleries and partnerships in other locations throughout California include: Mains & Von Hasseln of Camptonville; Bluett & Fardon and Dunham & Lathrop of Oakland; Sanders & Stinson of Marysville; and Abell & Welsh of Roseburg, Oregon