(CIVIL WAR.) Broadbent & Co.; photographers. Salt print photograph of Gideon Welles, with photo of his son Edgar. Hand-tinted salt print, 7 1/2 x 5 1/4 inches oval, on photographer's mount; mount trimmed to a crude oval without loss of border, minor foxing, tape remnants on verso. Philadelphia, circa 1861
The photographer Samuel Broadbent worked from this 814 Chestnut Street address from at least 1859 through 1861, the year Welles came to national prominence as Lincoln's Secretary of the Navy. Provenance: consigned by a great-great-grandson of Gideon Welles. with--a similar portrait of son Edgar Thaddeus Welles (1843-1914), also 7 1/2 x 5 1/4 inches oval, on plain contemporary mount with crude manuscript border; early pencil identification on verso.
