The Weld-Grimké Family Album is a 12.5 x 16 cm bound cartes de visite photograph album with some tintypes and gem tintypes interspersed. The album has a brown leather cover with gilt clasps. The photographs all appear to date from the 1860s to the 1870s but there is no precise date for individual photographs listed. The album has a printed title page that reads "Photographs/Boston/Roberts Brothers." The album is 50 pages with each page containing a single slot for a photograph, though some pages have multiple photographs tucked into the same slot. There are 52 photographs in the album, 46 of which are cartes de visite. There are also 6 tintypes, 2 of which are gem tintypes. The photographs are almost all studio portraiture of individuals ranging from infanthood to old age. One exception to this is a photograph of a satirical drawing of an unidentified individual playing some sort of instrument (loose photograph on page 49). Some of the individuals in the album have been tentatively identified with the majority unidentified. One photograph (on page 24) has been speculated to be a portrait of Charlotte Brown, an African-American servant of the Weld-Grimké family, but this has not been confirmed.
Other individuals that have been tentatively identified include:
- Theodore Dwight Weld (page 1, page 20)
- William Hamilton (page 4)
- Sarah Weld Hamilton (page 5)
- Angelina G. Hamilton (page 6)
- William Hamilton Jr. (page 7)
- Llewellyn Haskell (page 9)
- Llewellyn Thomas Haskell (page 12)
- Louis Olcott Haskell (page 13)
- Elizabeth "Lizzie" Cram (page 21)
- William James Rolfe (page 22)
- Theodore Weld Parmele (page 27, page 34)
- Elizabeth Smith Miller (page 28)
- Ann Carroll Fitzhugh (page 29)
- George Walker Weld (page 30)
- Gerrit Smith Miller (page 35)
- Ruth C. Bodwell (page 36)
- Rena Louise Twiss (page 45)
The album also contains commercial cartes de visite of public figures and artwork:
- A photograph of a painting of the Empress Eugenie. (page 33)
- A portrait of Rebecca an escaped slave from New Orleans. (page 38)
- A photograph of a painting of Beatrice Cenci. (loose item on page 41)
- A portrait of actor Edwin Booth (page 40) brother of John Wilkes Booth.
- A photograph of a painting of "Little Samuel" based on the etching done by Samuel Cousins. (page 43)
In addition to this finding aid, the Clement Library has created a Photographer Index for the album, containing the names of all the photographers in the order that they appear in the album. This index also records any handwritten inscriptions that were found on the photographs.
Famous abolitionists Angelina Grimké (1805-1879) and Theodore Dwight Weld (1803-1895) married on May 14, 1838, and moved with Angelina's sister Sarah (1792-1873) to Fort Lee, New Jersey. The couple had three children: Charles Stuart Weld (1839-1901), Theodore Grimké Weld (b. 1841), and Sarah Grimké Weld (b. 1844). In 1840, the family purchased a farm in Belleville, New Jersey, where they opened a school. However, the school struggled financially, and they eventually joined the Raritan Bay Union and opened and operated another school in Eagleswood, New Jersey. In 1864, they relocated to Hyde Park, Massachusetts. Sarah died on December 23, 1873, and Angelina died almost six years later on October 26, 1879. Weld lived the remainder of his life with his son Charles Stuart in Hyde Park, where he died in 1895.
