A Guide to the Winkelmann Photograph Collection, 1906-1991

Biographical Note

Winkelmann’s Studio founder F.C. Winkelmann (1874-1959) was born in Germany, where he was raised in an upper middle-class family. Around 1890, F.C. immigrated to New York without any ability to speak English, and he stayed in New York long enough to save money for a steamer trip to Galveston. Soon, he made his way to Brenham, where he worked in a furniture factory for two years until he was able to purchase a 50% interest in the Tom Holland Studio, which he changed to Winkelmann Photographer in 1894. For nearly sixty years, F.C. operated the studio in Brenham, while in the meantime he purchased interest in the local Brenham bank, helped launch the local newspaper The Banner-Press, and had seven children with his wife (who died in 1966).

One of those children, W.S. Winkelmann, took the studio over in 1952 after several years in life insurance sales and with little experience in photography. With assistance from a few helpful Texas Photographers Association members, W.S. continued operating the studio, as well as serving as a director for the Brenham bank and Blue Bell Creamery.

In 1972, W.S.’s son Norman inherited the family studio, and he, while maintaining the same close community ties as his father and grandfather, photographed Brenham and the surrounding area until 1991, when the studio closed.

Scope and Contents

The negatives of the Winkelmann Collection span nearly nine decades and document not only Brenham, but also the surrounding communities in Washington and Lee counties, including Burton, Giddings, Salem, New Wehdem, Chappell Hill, Independence, and Washington-on-the-Brazos. The collection contains over 300,000 negatives, approximately 15,000 of which are glass plates. The majority of the glass negatives are individual and group portraits of the area’s residents (mostly on 5 x 7 plates), including assemblies of families, schoolmates and athletes, church members and confirmation classes, and wedding parties, among others.

A smaller percentage of the glass negatives (on 6.5 x 8.5 and 8 x 10 plates), still numbering over a thousand, visually document important local institutions of the 1910s, 20s, and 30s such as the annual Maifest, Blue Bell Creameries (a.k.a. Brenham Creamery Co.), Brenham High School and Blinn College. Furthermore, these on-site negatives documents commercial and municipal building construction and other architectural characteristics of the area; agricultural activities, equipment, and facilities; local oil production; car collisions and structure fires; community festivals such as Maifest; local retailers’ sales floors and storefronts; gravesites and funerals; residential homes and early automobiles; and all the people who inhabited these various locations.

W.S. and Norman Winkelmann continued what was already a rich and extensive documentation of Washington County. The film negatives they produced (which total close to 300,00 negatives in modified 5 x 7 and 120 formats, in both black and white and color) roughly continue F.C. Winkelmann’s ratio of portrait work to on-site photography. This majority of this portion of the collection is stored off site. Please contact repository for further information.

Restrictions

Access Restrictions

Negatives and other transparent media in this collection are restricted. Please contact repository for further information.

The nitrate negatives in this collection are stored remotely. Advance notice required for retrieval. Contact repository for retrieval.

Administrative Information

Preferred Citation

Winkelmann Photograph Collection, Center for American History, The University of Texas at Austin.

Digital Versions

A UT System grant funded the digitization of a select portion of the collection, allowing patrons access to select scanned images through highlighted links next to the entries in this finding aid. To make an appointment to view other images from the archive, please contact the Photographs Archivist.

 Archivist's Note 

The glass negative portraits arrived at the Center organized by year and first letter of last name, so that the first letter could be inferred in most cases. However, the only direct identification available for these studio portraits on glass could be found on the emulsion side of the glass plates, and often these identifications proved to be illegible. In such cases, the archivist attempted a best guess and enclosed the name in brackets with a question mark (such as [Zcerkus?]) or merely indicated the first letter of the name followed by the phrase "[unidentified]". Both of these illegible types of portraits were arranged at the end of each letter, so that, for instance, "Zwernemann" would be followed by "[Zcerkus?]".

All series terms, except for those in brackets, were taken directly from the labels written by the Winkelmanns on the original boxes.

Inventory: Winkelmann Photograph Collection