Mar 30, 2023 - Sale 2631

Sale 2631 - Lot 272

Price Realized: $ 1,000
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 600 - $ 900
(PHOTOGRAPHY.) Cabinet card portrait of Amy Graham, a formerly enslaved woman in Georgia, by a Black photographer. Albumen photograph, 5 1/2 x 3 3/4 inches, on original photographer's mount; minor foxing; captioned on verso in a contemporary hand "Aunt Amy Graham, a colored woman 80 yrs old, a slave sold when 60 yrs old." Augusta, GA: R. Williams, circa 1885
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Additional Details

We can find one woman in the census records whose story might fit this caption. Amy Graham was born circa 1812 in South Carolina. In 1870, she was in Orange Springs, FL with a husband and several children. In 1880, she was in Augusta, GA, widowed, unemployed, and living with a younger couple from South Carolina, Edward and Rosa Warren. In the context of this photograph, taken by a Black photographer, we suspect it is more likely that Amy Graham was an actual aunt rather than a care-giving "auntie" to the person who wrote this caption. If she had been sold not long before 1865, this photo could date to circa 1885, when census records suggest she would have been about 73.

Robert Williams (circa 1834-1915) was working as a photographer in Augusta as early as 1870, when he was listed in the census as a mulatto "daguerrean artist." During the most of his career he was in partnership with his son Robert E. Williams (1858-1937) as "R. Williams & Son." A collection of their photographs is held by the University of Georgia.