Born in 1871, George H. Bingham was the son of Capt. George M. Bingham and his wife Minerva Valdemar. He had three sisters (Mary Alice, Nellie, and Maggie) and a brother William. Bingham’s great-grandfather, John Bingham, emigrated from Virginia to Arrow Rock (Saline County), Missouri, about 1823. Through his father’s line, George Bingham was the first cousin, once removed, of renowned Realist artist George Caleb Bingham (1911-1979).

George Bingham married [Mary] Maude Turley on October 16, 1893. In the 1898 *Missouri State Gazetteer and Directory* Bingham was listed as a carpenter, which was also his father’s trade. By 1900, however, Bingham was serving as postmaster in Arrow Rock, Missouri, and his wife was a clerk there. The couple moved to Rogers in 1904. He maintained a studio on West Walnut Street, on the second floor of what is called the Juhre Building, until his death on November 27, 1932. In 1908 Bingham hired R.C. Copp to install a large window in his studio [link to Juhre Building, Photo of the Month], at the time called a "single slant light."

Bingham’s in-studio photographs often featured a variety of painted backgrounds, and one of his trademarks was an impressed signature in the bottom right corner of the matted frame. The *Rogers Democrat* (March 25, 1908) remarked that Bingham "has firmly established a reputation of being one of the best photographers in Northwest Arkansas. Not only by the excellence of his equipment, which contains more and better lens [sic] than most studios outside the cities, but by the general excellence of his profession."

The Museum has no photographs of Bingham himself, but we do have a wealth of the photographs he took... over 160 at last count.

Erwin Juhre and his dog in downtown Rogers, 1904. Neg. #N008874

Finnis and Anna May Richards, 1932. Courtesy JoAnna Richards. Neg.
#N013930

Red Bluff on the War Eagle River, ca. 1920s. Neg. #N009000

Rogers baseball team, 1910. Neg. #N010114