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The Eagleswood Academy album is a 50 page cartes de visite album given to Theodore Weld by his former students at Eagleswood Academy in Perth Amboy, New Jersey on November 23, 1863. The 24 x 31 cm album has a brown leather cover, entitled "Theodore D. Weld" in gilt inlay. The album contains 194 photographs the majority of which are cartes de visite with some tintypes and gem tintypes interspersed. All of the photographs in the album are studio portraits. Most are presumably former students of Eagleswood Academy. Many of the individuals in the album are unidentified. Four loose items are also present in the album: an 1895 lithograph portrait of John Adams; a calling card for Mrs. Silas F. Overton; a calling card for a Miss Moseley; and a list of names, presumably of people within the album, that seems to have been created at a later date, presumably by Weld's daughter Sarah Grimké Weld Hamilton.

The Eagleswood Academy photograph album consists of a single bound volume of carte de visite photographs tucked into the pages along with some gem tintypes, one of which is encased. The album contains slots for four different photographs on each page. There are 169 cartes de visite in the album, all of them studio portraits of either individuals or small groups. There are also a few instances where gem tintypes are placed within the same slot as a carte de visite.

The album appears to have been gifted to Theodore Weld in 1863 from his former students. While many of the photographs were likely present in the album at that time, it appears that other photographs were added through the 1870s and possibly later. The photographs are mostly of Weld's former students, though some are individuals who appear to have no explicit connection with the school.

Enclosed in the album is a folded sheet of paper containing a list of names. Individuals on this list partially correspond to the physical order within the album. The list appears to have been created during the late 1860's and amended up until approximately 1877. Asterisks seem to indicate that the person had passed away, though in some cases the individuals without asterisks on the list had been dead for years prior. It appears that no new entries were added after 1877. The authorship of the list is uncertain, but appears to have been Sarah Grimké Weld Hamilton.

In 1886 Theodore Weld began reaching out to former students for additional photographs to put together in an album. Some of the photographs in this album may come from this period. A January 1, 1899 letter from Sarah Hamilton to her daughter mentions that she received her father's old school album with many pictures of her old classmates and their spouses and children. From this statement it appears that not all the people in the album necessarily went to or taught at Eagleswood.

Three other loose items are also present in the album: an 1895 lithograph portrait of John Adams, a calling card for Mrs. Silas F. Overton, and a calling card for a Miss Moseley.

Some of the photographs within the album have names written on the back, while others offer no clues as to who the person is. Through other sources some of the unnamed individuals in the album have been tentatively identified.

One interesting item of note is the photograph in slot #196 of the album, which has portraits taken many years apart of the same (unidentified) individual on both the front and back of the paper mount.

• A portrait of Charles Burleigh Purvis, African-American doctor and cofounder of Howard Medical School. (slot #53)
• A portrait of Bayard Wilkeson in Civil War uniform. Wilkeson died aged 19 at Gettysburg on July 1, 1863. (slot #85)
• A portrait of Ellen Wright Garrison, daughter of Martha Coffin Wright and niece of Lucretia Coffin Mott, the famed women's-rights activists who organized the 1848 Women's Rights Convention at Seneca Falls, NY. (slot #32)

The Eagleswood album contains penciled inscriptions beneath the various photographs, often times recording the name of the photographer as well as any other information written on the back of the paper mount of the photograph. Researchers should be aware that this information was added by a former member of staff and numerous errors are present. For conservation reasons these inscriptions have not been erased.

• Photographer Index, containing the names of all the photographers in the album as well as any inscriptions handwritten on the photographs.
• Individuals Index, containing the names of all the identified, and tentatively identified individuals who have portraits present in the album.

The Parrish family photograph album contains 110 photographs assembled by the Parrish family of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, including images of family and friends, political figures, celebrities, and popular illustrations as well as photographs related to Union efforts to educate freed slaves during the Civil War in the Port Royal Experiment.

The album (15.5 x 24 cm) has embossed brown leather covers and two metal clasps. 63 loose photographs are stored in Mylar sleeves and many appear to have been separated from the album over time. In some cases, it is possible to match loose images with a specific page slot through pairing inscriptions on the photograph with annotations present in the album. However, many loose images do not contain any identifying information, so it is unclear where some may have been located within the album or if they were ever associated with the album in the first place. It is possible that a small portion of the loose images were never originally included in the album since there are more photographs present in the collection than there are available photo slots in the album. At least two portraits from the 1890s do not appear to have belonged to the original family collection.

Compilation of the album may have first begun in the 1860s, but it was most likely completed during in the 1870s with photographs that the Parrish family had acquired over time. Sarah H. Parrish, née Wilson (1836-1892), the wife of Joseph Parrish’s grandson John Cox Parrish (1836-1921), may have been one of the primary creators of the album. She and John had a daughter named Caroline L. Parrish (1863-1915), who may be the “Carrie” whose name is written on the back of some of the photographs. Overall, there appear to be three different styles of handwriting present in the album. Captions for several of the album’s portraits were made in pencil in a flowing cursive while other names appear in a more juvenile-looking cursive hand, and a distinctive third hand also appears sporadically. The two cursive hands may well have been Sarah’s and Carrie’s as mother and daughter worked on the album together in the mid to late-1870s, with an occasional contribution (the third hand) possibly made by one of Carrie’s three younger brothers. One other detail supports this hypothesis: a portrait labelled “Fred” with “Mrs. Parrish, with love of Fred” inscribed on the verso. The individual photographed here was most likely Sarah’s cousin, Frederick Cleveland Homes (1844-1915). Additionally, the portrait on the page next to Fred’s portrait is of a young child identified as “Charlie Homes,” and it is likely that this is Fred’s son Charles Ives Homes (1872-1939).

Parrish family members are well represented in this album, while other unidentified family members may also be portrayed in some of the loose photographs without captions. Likely family friends or acquaintances of the Parrishes whose portraits are present include George and Catherine Truman, James and Lucretia Mott, the Rev. Richard Newton, and Phillip Brooks, all of whom were active in the same abolitionist organizations as the Parrishes. The album also contains many images of admired religious, political, and cultural figures, including Quaker heroes George Fox and Elizabeth Fry; Civil War leaders Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses Grant; George and Martha Washington; social reformers Dorothea Dix and Anna E. Dickinson; actor Edwin Booth; and Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. A number of these images are photographic reproductions of painted, engraved, or lithographic portraits. Also present are four hand-colored photographs of Dutch women in traditional dress as well as photographic reproductions of popular sentimental genre scenes such as “The Unconvanience of Single Life.”

Of particular note are a series of photographs related to the Port Royal Experiment, an ambitious effort to provide education for freed slaves following the capture of islands off the coast of South Carolina by Union troops in 1861. Relief committees in the North raised money and sent volunteers to set up schools and other institutions. Among the most successful was the Penn School, established by Laura Matilda Towne with support from the Philadelphia Freedmen’s organization in which the Parrish family was actively involved. People and places are identified with ink captions on the photographs themselves in a hand that differs from other inscriptions in the album. Towne may possibly have compiled these images herself and sent them to supporters back home. This series of photographs includes seven images of Beaufort, South Carolina, (four of which were produced by Sam A. Cooley, photographer to the Tenth Army Corps) captioned “Beaufort Soldiers’ Chapel and Reading Room,” “Path to the river of Smith’s Plantation,” “Beaufort House / Where we Stopped, showing the Beaufort Hotel and nextdoor office of the Adams Express Company,” “Soldiers’ Graves,” “Gen. Saxton’s Headquarters,” “Father French’s House,” and “Our House.” Three cartes de visite produced by Hubbard & Mix show instructors Towne, Ellen Murray, and Harriet Murray respectively posing with freed black children. The photograph with Ellen Murray bears inscriptions identifying her students as “Peg Aiken” and “Little Gracie Chapin (one of Miss Murray’s brightest pupils).” A fourth Hubbard & Mix image captioned “I’m a freeman” shows an African-American man dressed in clothing made from rags and includes an album page inscription that reads: “Young Roslin says, ‘Now I’m free, I go to bed/ when I please I’se gits up/ when I please. In olden times/ I’se help gits de breakfast/ but no’se time to eats it myself/ Ha-ha-I’se happy boy now.” Also present are three cartes de visite produced by photographers based in Nashville, Tennessee, including one portrait by T. M. Schleier of an African-American woman with two children (one of whom has a much lighter complexion than the other) with the recto caption “Lights & Shadows of Southern Life” and verso caption “Aunt Martha and children/ Slaves/ Nashville, Tenn.,” as well as two other images by Morse’s Gallery of the Cumberland that show the same young African-American boy looking sad “Before the Proclamation” and then grinning broadly “After the Proclamation.”