"What's in a Picture?" piece about a 1958 photograph staged to look like a scene

Authors

Ellen MacDonald Ward

Source

Down East

Date

10-1-1994

Pages

59

Abstract

"What's in a Picture?" piece about a 1958 photograph staged to look like a scene from the 1880s or 1890s by the local Antique Research Class in Dover-Foxcroft. The photo was apparently made to celebrate the recent acquisition by Hortense Bigelow, who is shown in the photo, of the featured antique patent-medicine peddler's wagon, once owned by David Horace Buxton of Abbott. Buxton's nostrum peaked in popularity during Prohibition, and Buxton reportedly had the opportunity at one time to sell his Buxton Medicine Company for $450,000. He unfortunately held out for $500,000, and lost it all. When he died in the early 1940s, the new laws governing the sale of patent medicines had all but put him out of business. His medicine wagon is now on display at the Shelburne Museum in Vermont.

Subjects

Medicines, Patent, Photographs, Buxton, David Horace

Recommended Citation

Ward, Ellen MacDonald, ""What's in a Picture?" piece about a 1958 photograph staged to look like a scene" (1994). Maine News Index - Down East Magazine. 1929.
https://digitalcommons.portlandlibrary.com/news_downeast/1929