Search

The Allen family photograph album contains carte-de-visite and tintype portraits of various individuals, including members of the Allen family of Mayville, Michigan.

The Allen family photograph album (13cm x 10cm) contains 22 cartes-de-visite, 13 tintypes, one lithograph, and one printed card. The cartes-de-visite and tintypes are studio portraits of men, women, and children. Most items show a single person, though some, such as a woman and a young baby, were photographed in pairs. The lithograph depicts a young girl holding a dog. An educational card, one of a series of "Little People Lesson Pictures" issued by the American Sunday-School Union (volume IV, number 1, part 5), is laid into the volume. The card has a colored print of a Biblical scene entitled "Beginning of the Hebrew Nation," and the reverse side has questions and answers about Abraham's journey to Canaan. The cartes-de-visite were made by photographers in locations such as Imlay City, Michigan; Owosso, Michigan; and Peterborough, Ontario. The volume's covers are leather, with a Maltese gold-embossed cross stamped in relief on each side.

The Arabella Chapman carte-de-visite albums primarily contain carte-de-visite and tintype photographic portraits of members of the Chapman family, middle-class African Americans from Albany, New York. Also pictured are friends, neighbors, and a few prominent abolitionists and public figures.

The Arabella Chapman carte-de-visite albums (16cm x 13cm) contain 95 carte-de-visite and tintype photographic studio portraits of the family, friends, and associates of Arabella Chapman, along with public figures and role models. The photos were taken from the 1860s to the turn of the century, with the bulk from the 1870s and 1880s. An inscription indicates that "Bella" Chapman received the second album from R. H. Bundy on October 3, 1878. The albums' covers are bound in blue leather, with designs carved in relief and metal clasps.

The first volume has 32 cartes-de-visite and 17 tintypes, including commercially produced photographs of Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, and John Brown. Also included is an autographed carte de visite by New York State Representative and Underground Railroad organizer William Henry Johnson (1833-1918). The second volume has 24 cartes-de-visite and card photographs, as well as 22 tintypes. Each volume has a partially completed index, with some manuscript captions written directly on some mounts and album pages. The sequence of photographs does not correspond to the indices.

Many of the photographs were taken by photographers in Albany, New York, along with a few images taken during visits to Pleasure Island Park; Saratoga, New York; and other locations. Arabella Chapman appears in six photographs taken at different times in her life.

Portraits of Arabella Chapman's immediate and extended family make up the largest portion of the photographs, including repeated photographs of her parents, future husband, siblings, cousins and nieces, daughter, and in-laws. The majority of the remaining images show Chapman's school friends, family friends, and neighbors from Albany. These include William Brent, a hotel waiter born in Washington, D.C.; Jim Goines, a porter; Charlie Butler, the son of a billiard hall owner and also employed as a waiter; and Anna Latour, the Chapmans' next-door neighbor, whose brother William was a waiter. Some portraits show Arabella's female peers, such as Elizabeth Myers, the daughter of Stephen Myers; Anna Bolden, listed both as a student and as a servant in a white household; and Mary Crosby, who with Chapman formed the only recitation team from Wilberforce in Albany's 1868 annual public school exhibition. A photograph pasted into the last page of the second volume shows Arabella's children and their neighbors, the Spragues.