Harry Hill, originally from Ontario, moved to Titusville, Pennsylvania in 1884 where he met and married Katherine Nelson. He studied and worked as an apiarist in Canada, California and Cuba but chose to settle in Florida in 1894. Harry and Katherine’s son, Lowell, was born in Titusville, Pennsylvania, the year before, so they moved to Florida with an infant. After setting up an apiary in New Smyrna, the Hills settled in Spruce Bluff on the North Fork of the St. Lucie River.
The Hills moved to Ft. Pierce in 1898 where Harry, not only was managing editor of the American Bee Keeper, he launched into pineapple culture on a large scale. Photographs were increasingly enhancing the magazine. Soon Harry’s interest and growing skills as a photographer overshadowed his other enterprises. By 1905, advertisements for the Florida Photographic Concern were appearing in the St. Lucie News Tribune.
This advertisement began appearing in the St. Lucie News Tribune in 1905.
Harry Hill was producing commercial photographs by the turn of the 20th Century.
This appeared in the July 1906. It has Florida Photographic Concern embedded in the photograph but the image was probably made before the company was founded. James Heddon and Harry Hill were associates for many years.
These almost identical photographs were published in the June 1907 American Bee Keeper. Harry Hill was making the point that photographs on semi-matte stock reproduce better that ones on glossy paper. The article explained his engravers, “one of the best house in New York” preferred matte.
American Bee Keepers subscribers lived throughout the United States and in other countries! HOW IN THE WORLD DID HARRY HILL MANAGE THIS?
The last American Bee Keeper was published in June 1908.
