Herbert Arthur Appleton was born February 1, 1896, in Norwich, Norfolk, England. He went to South Africa, where he started school in Port Elizabeth, at Miss Crawford's School. His father managed a bottling factory, there manufacturing ginger beer and soft drinks for three years, and then moved back to England. He emigrated from England to Toronto, Ontario, Canada in 1913. He first came to Buffalo February 14, 1917 and started to work at the Curtiss Wright Company on Vulcan Street. Appleton enlisted in the United States Army on December 11, 1917, and was sent to Columbus, Ohio. He then went on to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, where he became a United States citizen. From July 28, 1918 to September 15, 1918 he attended Cornell University to study mapping for the army. He served in the Signal Corps photographic division. He was honorably discharged December 12, 1918. On January 9, 1919 he began work for George Hare on Franklin Street and stayed there until he started his own business on June 1, 1927. He was the first man to photograph models in Buffalo. Appleton was director of the Niagara Frontier Industrial Advertisers Association, and a member of the Buffalo Section Six of the New York Professional Photographers Society, the Greater Buffalo Advertising Club, the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, the Buffalo Athletic Club and Troop I, American Legion. Appleton also served as a judge for the Buffalo Evening News, annual amateur Snapshot Contest. He was honored by the Photographers Association of America, in 1950 with a certificate of merit for illustrations chosen by a national exhibition and in 1951; he was again honored with a master of photography degree. He married Emma Ruth Frid and was father of Herbert A. Appleton, Jr., and an adopted daughter, Doris Appleton. He died at the age of sixty-seven, at the Meyer Memorial Hospital in Buffalo, on April 19, 1963.