Visual Materials
A collection of chiefly 19th-century photographs mounted in their original cases, which are mostly portraits with some outdoor views, and some related images in other formats. The collection contains 72 daguerreotypes and 46 ambrotypes (approximately 1840s-1860s), and 58 early tintypes (approximately mid-1850-1900s). In addition, there are two modern daguerreotypes, made in 1992 and 2003 by photographer Robert Shlaer, and three ambrotypes made in 2012 by Barret Oliver, of the mausoleum of Henry E. Huntington and his wife, Arabella Huntington, on the grounds of the Huntington Library. Most of the photographs are studio portraits, including pioneers of the American West, or ancestors of families who came West, and many sitters are unidentified. A few of the notable portraits are: Edgar Allan Poe; Jane Thoreau (aunt of Henry David Thoreau); John B. Colton (Jayhawker of 1849); a postmortem view of a young daughter of Benjamin D. Wilson; Theodore D. Judah; a whole plate ambrotype of a group of San Francisco businessmen; and a Civil War drummer boy and his mother. There are a few cased photographic prints and tintypes of Abraham Lincoln, including two circular images that were campaign badges. Also in the collection are several outdoor scenes: California Gold Rush miners posed with tools at work sites; the First Baptist Church, San Francisco, 1849; a street scene in the frontier town of Orleans, California; and the locomotive "Sam Cruse."
(photDAG 101)
