Share Media File

Transcript

On the morning of June 1, 1858, fifty prominent American artists boarded a train at the Camden Street Depot in Baltimore. Among the artists was David Hunter Strother of Martinsburg, Virginia.

Strother had studied art in New York and Europe, painted portraits to support himself, then returned home broke and despondent. He abandoned painting and began writing and illustrating travel stories for Harpers magazine under the pen name Porte Crayon. The stories were immensely popular and Strother soon became one of the highest paid writers in America.