Arthur E. Albee was the son of Abner Albee, Jr. and Elizabeth Ann Walker. His father, a native of Holliston, Massachusetts, was a home based boot manufacturer in Hopkinton. His mother, a native of Needham, Massachusetts, also had family involved in that craft. His paternal grandfather, Abner Albee, Sr. was a Hopkinton boot maker, born in 1788 at Medway, Massachusetts. Grandmother, Hepzibah (Perry) Albee died at Warwick in January 1886. Arthur moved to Athol, Massachusetts and bought out photographer Alvin B. Harlow in 1888, and set up a photography studio at 45 Exchange Street, relocating to 422 Main Street in 1895. While at Athol, he was an officer in the Star Lodge F. & A.M., and a member of the Union Royal Arch Chapter. The beginning and end of his Athol years were punctuated by the deaths at Warwick of his father, in November 1888, and his mother, in October 1899. On June 15, 1898, he purchased the camera equipment, negatives, and supplies of retiring long-time Torrington, Connecticut, photographer Frederick O. Hills, whose studio was located at 45 Water Street. During the next several months he continued to operate his photography studio in Athol while preparing his new Torrington studio at the Water Street address. A well respected portrait photographer, Arthur E. Albee was one of the earliest postcard publishers in Torrington, although his interest in postcards was short lived and coincided with initial public enthusiasm for the new medium of communication. On the evening of February 28, 1915, a fire that originated inside the Albee Studio consumed the wooden frame upper stories of the Butler Block on Water Street. At the Albee Studio everything was in ashes, including many “irreplaceable photographs” and “fifteen thousand negatives.” Within a period of four months he reestablished his business at South Prospect Street Extension (south of Water Street). Arthur E. Albee enjoyed a long and distinguished career in portrait photography. His later years, however, were pitted with setbacks and disappointment. In 1915, his sister, Manilla H. Albee, came from Warwick, Massachusetts, to live with him, and died in Torrington in April 1917. In December 1923, the interior of his studio was damaged by a chemical fire. Walking across Main Street, near the center of town, he was struck and injured in June 1926 by an automobile driven by Judge Frank Buonocore,and he failed to prevail in his subsequent lawsuit. In 1930 he was forced by financial circumstances to sell his mortgaged buildings. In May of that year the U.S. Bond Company, foreclosed on his Daycoeton Place property. Albee was last listed as a photographer in the 1929 Torrington Directory,the same year that he moved to 148 Prospect Street. Caught in the onslaught of the Great Depression, he struggled to earn a living in 1931, at the age of eighty, as a a door-to-door salesman. Daily, in all seasons, he covered the streets of Torrington selling his goods. In late December 1935, he caught a cold. A week later, on January 5, 1936, he died at his residence. He received a Masonic funeral and was buried in an unmarked grave at Hillside Cemetery. He was survived by his youngest brother, Myron A. Albee, of Orange, Massachusetts. In September 2007,concerned Masons placed a marker on his plot. It reads:“Arthur E. Albee 1851-1936, Torrington Photographer.” Following the installation of the plaque, members of Torrington’s Seneca Lodge #55 performed a Masonic ceremony at the gravesite.

(Special thanks to Gary Smith of the Connecticut Postcard Club, for his 2011 biographical article on Mr. Albee.)