Ira Kneeland collection.

1880-1943

540

166 photographs.

Two boxes of photographs taken by Ira Kneeland of his family, friends, and various locations around Boulder County and Denver.

"Ira Kneeland was born before the Civil War in Vermont. His father was disabled in the war and when Ira was seventeen, his father received a $500 payment from the government. With the money they bought a photography kit and Ira supported the family as an itinerate photographer and carpenter.
After the war, the family moved west, stopping in many places until they arrived in the Boulder area. The family background was New England Puritan, but somewhere along the line they became dedicated Socialists. Sometime during the period they were living in Colorado, Ira came in contact with a socialist colony near Topolabampo, Mexico and convinced his family to join him in Mexico and he returned to Colorado and they left for Mexico in November 1893.
He was the official photographer for the Colony in Mexico. Hundreds of photographs he took in Mexico are part of a special collection in the Fresno State University Library, having to do with the colony in Mexico. The last of the family to leave Mexico was my grandmother, my mom, and her younger brother.
Ira had gone deaf in Mexico and his youngest sister promised their mother that she would always look after Ira. Ira and his sister homesteaded 1100 acres of mountain land in eastern Fresno County and they lived there together until they died on successive days in the 1940s." (Written in 2000 by Cyril Gabriel, the grandson of Ira Kneeland's sister.)

RIGHTS: Materials in this collection may be used freely for any purpose, with attribution to the Carnegie Library for Local History, Boulder. No duplicated materials may be deposited or placed on file in any other archive, museum, library or similar repository. Questions of copyright are the responsibility of the user.

Photographs.

Kneeland, Ira Duane
1862-1950
University of Colorado Boulder

Gabriel, Cyril

Kneeland, Ira Duane, 1862-1950

Ira Kneeland collection

The one hundred and nine photographs printed on paper and one mounted photograph ("Clemons Salted Matt Surface") contained in Folders 1-26 came to the Carnegie Branch Library for Local History, in January 2000, directly from Cyril Gabriel, the grandson of Ira Kneeland's sister, Flora Isabelle Kneeland. The thirty-seven mounted photographs and two copies in Folders 28-37 were donated by California State University, Fresno, in May 2002. They first contacted Mr. Gabriel, who requested that they send them to the Carnegie Branch Library to be included in the Ira Kneeland Collection. The photograph of Earl Dickensheets and wife was donated by Cyril Gabriel in August 2003. Photographs in box 2 of this collection, came to the Carnegie Library in 2019/2020 from the University of Colorado Archives. These photos appear to have been copied originally from photos in the California State University, Fresno archives and some are duplicates of materials in box 1.