Cabinet Card of Harry Loryea father of Iconic Tattoo Artist Apache Harry

This amazing cabinet card is of Harry Loryea (1862-1913) the image is signed by Loryea to his aunt Rebecca. The photo was taken at Edouart & Cobbs photo studio at 504 Kearny St. in San Francisco showing a young Harry Loryea.
The Loryeas: A Jewish Immigrant Family’s Curious Connections with Tattooing
By Carmen Forquer Nyssen
“Harry Loryea (1862-1913) was enumerated as a photographer alongside his brothers and sister Corrine on the 1900 Federal Census for Spokane, his usual occupation at the time was hog-farming. Along with his siblings, in the 1880s, Harry had settled in San Jose, California, where he and his wife, Nellie, operated the Alum Rock Hotel. When the rest of his family whisked away to Washington State, he gave up city life and bought a farm in Antioch, California. It was here that his children were born and raised—most pertinently his oldest son John Harry Loryea Jr. (1892-1940), who entangled himself in the tattoo world much more tangibly than his Loryea kin. For an aggrandizing effect suggestive of the old ‘Wild West’ inspired tattoo narratives, he conjured the inventive tattoo moniker, “Apache Harry.” Eventually, he also grew his hair long as a showy accompaniment, and concocted a spiel—echoing the legacy of Hori Chiyo—about having learned his craft, in 1902, in Manila, from a hand-poking Japanese master. Between his animating shtick, tall stature, and the plentiful tattoos covering his body, including an “intricate flag arrangement on his broad chest,” and “a copy of Da Vinci’s Last Supper on his shoulder,” he stood forth as an impressive tattoo character—wherever his travels took him. Within the next few years, the 500 designs Apache Harry Loryea toted around in his trunk saw mileage all over the country, in both carnivals and tattoo shops. In 1928 he performed with Pyle’s “Cross Country” carnival in Pennsylvania and New York as the “tattooed terror.” The fall of 1929 found him plying his trade in the seaport city of Brownsville, Texas, and also spinning his imaginative yarns for a local newspaper feature. In 1930, he trekked through the state with the Rice & Dorman Carnival and the Donald McGregor Shows, then for several years, cruised through California with the Craft Shows.
As he had hoped, Harry Loryea had turned his love for tattooing into a bona fide occupation. Yet, while his many show gigs implied some prosperity over the years, by mid-decade he probably struggled to care for his large family, which had since grown to four children. The stock market had crashed in 1929, and the ensuing economic depression left the nation in utter destitution. Tattooers were hit especially hard, and in time, sideshows and carnivals fell victim. Perhaps because it was his most viable option under these circumstances, Harry next ended up on the New York Bowery—one of the country’s most impoverished regions, but also where tattooing had long been a welcome service. The Bowery, since the 1850s, had been a hotspot for tattooing, entertaining the likes of Martin Hildebrandt, artist behind the first ‘trade-specific’ tattooed attractions; Samuel F. O’Reilly, patentor of the first electric tattoo machine; and many world-traveling practitioners, such as Japan’s Hori Toyo, who had put his stylized renderings on the Loryea-linked Aimee Crocker Gillig.
Claiming his place in the Bowery’s rich tattoo lineage, Harry opened a tattoo studio at No. 22 Bowery, in 1935, middling between numerous competitors. One was the once-prodigious Charlie Wagner, who each morning begged for coffee money outside his 11 Chatham Square tattoo shop. Others coming-and-going from the Bowery’s downtrodden tattoo scene over the remainder of the decade were: 

Millie Hull, Tommy Lee, Ed Smith, Bob Wicks, Andy Sturtz, Lou Mormon, Ralph Bayone, Ace Harlyn, Willie Moskowitz, Al Neville, and Phil Duane. Under the gloom cast down by the Third Avenue elevated train, all these practitioners rivaled each other for whatever business could be mustered from the browbeaten folks milling about, and as such, they looked for ways to expand their income. Some, including Harry, incorporated the peculiar practice of ‘black eye removal’ into their services, which earned them bonus coverage in the media and much needed promotion. The Depression, in general, had elicited media interest in all Bowery happenings, and Apache Harry’s larger than life presence ranked him high among tattooers.
In April of 1937, Harry enjoyed a huge spread in national newspapers describing his ‘black eye specialist’ work tending to the wounds of Bowery roughhousers suffering from a night of revelry gone wrong. The same year, in another syndicated interview, Harry praised the implementation of Social Security, which had ushered in hundreds of tattoo customers anxious to have their numbers indelibly inked on their person for reference. This “swanky, sober mid-day and morning trade,” he let it be known to journalist James Aswell, and the country, made for a brisk business boom. Of all Harry’s media features, his most complimentary was a colorful spread in the December of 1936 issue of Life Magazine—covering, not his black eye sideline, but his true-blue profession as a tattoo artist. The full two pages depicted his work bench, his brightly painted tattoo flash, and two of his loyal customers, Michael Brandmaier and Six Ring Dutch, wearing a splendidry of his religious, patriotic, and nautical designs. Thanks to the barrage of media exposure Harry was solidified in history as one of the Bowery’s iconic tattooers, but the portrayals presented didn’t quite capture his full legacy. None of them documented his birth name, Harry Loryea, so his true identity, and therefore the details of his life and career, have been obscured in history until now. As has been revealed with the unearthing of his story, he stood as one of a few Jewish tattooers who needled New York Bowery denizens with his art during the early part of the twentieth century, along with “Lew the Jew” Alberts (real name Albert Kurzman), Willie Moskowitz and family, Max Peltz, and Freddy Grossman.
Beyond his ethnic background even, like his pioneering ancestors, he was an enthusiastic entrepreneur, instilled with the grit and perseverance to follow his passion through all the ups-and-downs. He wasn’t a top practitioner of his generation, but he made his mark just the same, despite harsh obstacles. Incredibly, his crowning distinction in tattoo history, his Bowery heyday, had peaked at one of tattooing’s most dismal times and he gained the recognition for it within a short five years. On October 5, 1940, Apache Harry Loryea passed away from a heart attack, in his second New York City tattoo shop at 2 Bowery, closing the final chapter on his tattooing days and the Loryea family’s most curious tattoo connection.”