Robert (Bob) James Lee’s greatest passion in life was his Mendocino County historic photo collection. He spent thousands of hours collecting photos and negatives, and making copies from them in his own darkroom. (Photo courtesy of the Grace Hudson Museum & Sun House, City of Ukiah)
Sometimes, what starts as one person’s hobby eventually has a ripple effect that reaches the entire community.
Such is the case with the extraordinarily diverse Mendocino County images that together make up the Robert J. Lee Collection of historic photographs.
The work of Ukiah resident Bob Lee was already being recognized by the Ukiah Daily Journal in the early 1960s, and it continued throughout his life, with the end result being perhaps the most comprehensive collection of historic images of Mendocino County that exists anywhere.
Thanks to the generosity of Bob Lee’s family, those photographs will be available to everyone in the community long into the future.
In honor of her father, who died earlier this year, Ukiah resident Peggy Fimbres has loaned the entire Robert J. Lee Collection to the Held-Poage Research Library, headquarters of the Mendocino County Historical Society, on a long-term basis for the benefit of Mendocino County residents.
Fimbres, who grew up with both of her parents actively involved in the local history community, said sending her father’s photographic collection to the Held-Poage Research Library was “the right place for it to go.”
Among the many thousands of photographs in the collection are early images of the county captured by pioneer photographer A.O. Carpenter, father of Ukiah artist Grace Hudson.
Some of those hold a special place in my heart, having been printed from glass plate negatives that Bob Lee rescued from beneath the Sun House when no one else wanted them, and where they had been all but forgotten for decades.
He reprinted the photographs, and later donated the original glass plate negatives back to the Grace Hudson Museum, where they are today a treasured part of the museum’s collection.
Whenever I see one of those A.O. Carpenter photos with the telltale moisture damage around the edges, I thank God for people like Bob Lee, who recognized the historic value of those glass plate negatives and saved them from almost certain destruction.
Because of his quick thinking, we now have images of a just-completed Marks Building at the corner of Perkins and State streets, circa 1890; a Vichy Springs stagecoach, circa 1901; the interior of the Mendocino Masonic Hall in 1897, and hundreds of other photographs that might otherwise have been lost to time.
The Grace Hudson Museum’s 2006 book, “Aurelius O. Carpenter: Photographer of the Mendocino Frontier” is dedicated to Robert Lee and his wife, Lila, “without whom this project would not be possible.”
In addition to decades of collecting and printing the thousands of historic images in the Robert J. Lee Collection, Bob Lee also worked to tell the story behind the photos.
He developed a network of local people who he would turn to in an effort to place the photos in their historic context. One person might be able to name those shown in a particular photo, another to date a vehicle or provide an exact location.
Bob Lee devised a numbering system for the collection, which should prove invaluable to future researchers, and also made a point of noting on each print the family name of the person who had given him the image for copying, along with any other information he was able to gather about each photograph.
He was unfailingly generous in providing images from his collection whenever I asked for help with a Daily Journal history project, and though we’ve reprinted hundreds of Robert J. Lee Collection photos over the years, I know that we’ve only scratched the surface of what is contained in the collection.
I look forward to the new discoveries that I know lie ahead. More information from the Held-Poage Research Library will be printed when the collection is available for public access.
The Held-Poage Research Library is at 603 W. Perkins St. in Ukiah, and is open Wednesday through Friday, 1 to 4 p.m. To join the Mendocino County Historical Society, visit www.pacificsites.com~mchs.