?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 2,500 - $ 3,500
(PHOTOGRAPHY.) Pair of elegantly compiled photo albums from the Gwinn family of Savannah and New York. 139 portrait photographs, a mix of tintypes, albumens and silver prints in carte-de-visite, cabinet and larger formats, inserted into album leaves. 2 volumes. Quarto, original decorative morocco, about 10 x 8 inches, moderate wear, one separated from album block; several album leaves broken, photographs generally with minimal wear. New York and elsewhere, 1881-1896 and undated
This album was presented by Chester F. Gwinn (born circa 1852) to his wife in 1881. They were at 303 East 17th Street in Manhattan at the time. He appears in the Savannah Freedmen's Bank records in 1872-1874 as a waiter at the Pulaski House. The 1880 census shows him as a single Georgia-born mulatto servant in a boarding house at 4 West 29th, Manhattan; at the 303 East 17th address as a registered voter in the 1882 and 1886 City Record; and as a waiter living at 113 West 26th in the New York City directories from 1891 to 1894--one year he is listed as Chesterfield Gwinn. He's mentioned in the 24 May 1891 Brooklyn Eagle as president of the Young Men's Benevolent League of Brooklyn.
None of the photographs are captioned on the album leaves. Most of the backmarks which can be examined are from New York, and from Savannah and Augusta, GA. The great majority of the sitters are African-American. One tintype shows a young man in military uniform, possibly a military cadet, or member of a military orchestra. Another shows a man in masonic garb. One is signed on verso by Samuel LeCount Cook, a Black physician in Washington.
The most famous person we have identified in this album was the well-known Black orator Henry Gwinn (1820-1881) of Savannah, GA, who may have been Chester's estranged father. Henry had remarried to a younger woman by 1870, and Chester's 1872 bank record shows him as son of "Henry, dead" although the orator Henry was very much alive at that point. The album contains three of his cartes-de-visite, two of them with printed caption "Prof. Henri Gwinn, P.B." placing him in France, and another as "Prof. Henry Gwinn" in Jacksonville, FL; both have Saratoga Springs, NY backmarks, where he spent the last years of his life.
The Gwinns and their family were undoubtedly distinguished; we hope that someone can identify more of the sitters in these elegantly compiled albums.
