Ohio city directories and federal census records from the later 19th and early 20th centuries document that Joseph N. Strickmaker (1843-1913) worked as a painter and photographer in Tuscarawas County, Ohio. In the obituary for his wife, Lissa V. Strickmaker from 1939, her late husband is mentioned specifically as a “well-known portrait maker and photographer.”

In Tuscarawas County, the extensive Kuhn family originates from common ancestor Henry Kuhn, a German immigrant born in 1819 in Wittgenstein, Berleburg, Westphalia. Henry’s two sons each had at least nine children, and these two lines of the Kuhn family helped pioneer this area in Northeastern Ohio.