?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,500 - $ 2,500
(PHOTOGRAPHY.) Carte-de-visite album of Black subjects, many of them apparently from Seneca and Geneva, New York. 49 photographs (albumens and tintypes) inserted in 24 album leaves. No place, circa 1860s-1870s
None of the 49 photographs are captioned. An index leaf lists 44 names, but it is unclear which portraits match each name. Almost all of the sitters are African American except for William Henry Augustus Bissell, rector of Trinity Church in Geneva, NY from 1848-1868 and later the Episcopalian bishop in Vermont. The Rev. Henry Highland Garnet is listed first in the list, but his portrait has since been removed. Also listed are educator Mary J. Bland (1824-1900) of Geneva, NY; her husband George J. Bland; two other Bland family members and two others named Gayton (George's mother's maiden name), though we are not sure which portraits are theirs. A clipping of Mary J. Bland's obituary notice is laid in. George and Mary are listed in the 1860 census in Seneca, NY, the next town west from Geneva. Their neighbors were the Kenney family; Maggy Kenney is listed. The Johnson and Jeffrey names also appear repeatedly. Gatons, Johnsons, and Blands are all numerous among Seneca's Black community in the 1860 census.
