G. E. Butler, a photographer in Cortland, New York was walking in the woods one day when he happened upon a young girl who seemed to be on a mission. He said “Hey little girl, where are you headed in such a hurry”? She replied that she was bringing her ill grandmother some chicken soup. The photographer asked the little girl her name and she said “Little Red Riding Hood”. Butler told the child that she was doing a great deed and that she should come by his photography studio with her parents and he would provide her with a free portrait. Their conversation in the forest scared off the “big bad wolf” so Little Red Riding Hood’s trip to her grandmother’s cottage was uneventful. That is enough fantasy for now. In reality, the photographer of this cabinet card photograph was George Edwin Butler. Butler succeeded George I. Pruden as the proprietor of a Cortland photography studio in 1893. Butler is cited in a New York Court of Appeals (1910) volume. He participated in a trial as a forensic photographer of the location of an accident involving an automobile and a child on a bicycle. This citation is the first mention I have found of a cabinet card era photographer being employed by a plaintiff or a defendant in a court case.
THE CABINET CARD GALLERY 