Mar 21, 2024 - Sale 2663

Sale 2663 - Lot 333

Price Realized: $ 812
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 600 - $ 900
(PHOTOGRAPHY.) Mansfield, photographer. The Albino, or White Negro Girl: Helen Ann Windman Walker, Henry Sedam Walker. Albumen photograph, 1½ x 1¼ inches, on carte-de-visite-sized photographer's mount, captioned "Twin brother and sister, offspring of colored parents, 8 years of age on 2nd of May 1864. As exhibited at Burnell & Prescott's Museum, cor 4th & Pine Sts., St. Louis, Mo."; minor staining from mounting of photograph, minimal wear. St. Louis, MO, circa 1864
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Additional Details

Helen Ann Windman Walker (1856-1922) was exhibited widely as a circus attraction from at least 1862 to 1868, sometimes alongside her brother Henry as seen here.

Census records show that they were born in New Jersey and raised in Manhattan by their mother Phoebe, a washerwoman. In 1870, Henry was a domestic servant for the same museum proprietor named here, John Burnell, in Pittsburgh. An ancestry.com family tree asserts that Helen married in 1872 and raised several children in the Cleveland, OH area.