While collecting census records for my husband’s family in South Devon, England, I found an 1861 census entry for their family with a visitor/boarder who was a photographer. William Haddy was born around 1826 in Blackawton. Since he is listed as a Methodist Lay Preacher in the census, he is likely to be the son of Grace and John Haddy who was baptised 07 Dec 1825, listed in the England and Wales Non-Conformist Record Indexes (RG4-8) on FamilySearch.org. The most likely death registration for him is in Q2 1889 in Totnes Reg. District; I have not found an 1891 Census listing for him.
He is listed in White's 1878 Gazeteer and Directory with a Bolton Street address in Brixham.
Since Ancestry is having a promo this weekend, I’m collecting city directory entries from this collection:
Ancestry.com. UK, City and County Directories, 1766 - 1946 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2013.
I may have found some hits from the British Newspaper Archive. I also remember finding a very useful article about how to track down relatives who were photographers, but all my previous finds are on an old hard drive which failed.
I'm wondering what resources might be useful in learning more about him. City directories, trade directories, and newspapers can give residence information or the locations he might have been in business, but how can I branch out from there and find out more about his photography?
The technical question of what kind of photography is in use at the time is more relevant to photography.SE, so I'll search over there as well. The New York Public Library has a research guide An Introduction to Photographic Processes with a history of photography timeline, and guides for their own collections.
On the book wishlist: My Ancestor Was A Studio Photographer by Robert Pols, published by the Society of the Genealogists