Creating Fiction from History: 9/29/2021

The year was 1877. Having signed the contract in the year previous, "The Professor" officially became the Documenter for the Northern Pacific Railway's west-ward expansion.

Young Frank Jay, or F. Jay as he was known to friends and family, had just relocated to Moorhead, Minnesota, where he proceeded to open the first of four photographic studios under the family name.

Along the way, Frank married his high school sweetheart Lily Snyder. While in Moorhead, Frank and Lily had a daughter, Bertha. Later, several years after moving both his new family and studio across the border to Fargo, North Dakota, Jack Haynes, was dragged, kicking and screaming, into this bright cruel - and cold - world. Haynes, later in life, would become the official photographer for Yellowstone National Park.

It was in the late Spring of 1912, while riding in The Haynes Palace Studio situated within one of the Pullman train cars, that Bertha had a photograph taken of herself and her new husband, Donald Beeman, of Fargo. Unfortunately, the studio in which she had their memory recorded was short of supplies, so it wasn't until they returned to her father's newest studio that they were able to get the photograph developed. Thus, the address in the accompanying photographic seal.

Don and Bertha were treated, thanks to the Northern Pacific Railroad and her father, to an all-expenses paid tour of Yellowstone National Park. The newly wedded couple set up shop at 392b Jackson Street, above her father's new studio, where they were both kept plenty busy with - can you believe it - nine children.

After several years brought as many new Beeman's, however, they made a mutual decision to find greater lodgings.