Cowboy Sunday School

The American Heritage Center has completed a project to digitize the photographs of W. B. D. and Annette Gray, who were congregational ministers in Wyoming from 1900 to 1918.

In 1900, William Bradford Dodge (W. B. D.) Gray was appointed superintendent of the Home Missionary and Sunday School Society in Wyoming. In 1902, he married Annette who later traveled extensively through the state as a missionary, often acting as temporary pastor in communities which lacked a permanent minister.

The couple’s missionary work was supported by benefactors from the Eastern United States. For this purpose they took many photographs of small communities and rural areas of the state, which were exhibited during winter fundraising visits to Boston and other eastern cities. The photographs tend to emphasize the under-settled and rural aspects of the state, and often capture the many small communities in early Wyoming from which few photographs have survived, as well as the beginnings of larger towns.

Missionary Tour of Fremont County, 1907

Links to digitized photographs can be found in the online inventory for the collection at: https://rmoa.unm.edu/docviewer.php?docId=wyu-ah01053.xml. To browse and search the collection in full, please access the digital collection at: http://digitalcollections.uwyo.edu/luna/servlet/uwydbuwy~70~70.

The digitization of this collection was partially funded by the Wyoming Cultural Trust Fund, which in 2010 awarded the AHC $10,000 to digitize over 7,000 images from six of its premier photographic collections.

–Ben Goldman, Digital Programs Manager