Our Favorite Victorian Photographs

[L Verge]

(07-13-2016 03:05 PM)PaigeBooth Wrote:  

(07-13-2016 12:35 PM)L Verge Wrote:  

(07-13-2016 12:07 PM)Eva Elisabeth Wrote:  

(07-12-2016 07:05 PM)L Verge Wrote:  

(07-12-2016 05:08 PM)Eva Elisabeth Wrote:  Here's another to brood about (could it be a painting?):
http://ourhairourskin.com/?p=461

Could be a painting, but very doubtful that it is Mrs. Keckly. I doubt that the other three posted on this thread are Elizabeth either. I'll try to find time to search for ones that have been better verified.

When the Surratt Society raised the funds to mark her grave, renowned Lincoln scholar, Thomas Schwartz, sent us a photo of Mrs. Keckly in later years for us to use on the dedication program. I just have to find it in our computer files again.

---

The computer refuses to let me transfer some photos of Mrs. Keckly to this forum, but if you go to the Wiki bio of the lady and an article on her from the Smithsonian magazine (obtained by googling Photos of Elizabeth Keckly), you will see a photo that was obviously taken at the same time as the one that Tom Schwartz sent to the Surratt project. Dr. Schwartz's pose, however, is more of a profile.

There is also an earlier photo of the lady that has all the younger features of the aforementioned photos above. Go to http://blackpast.org/aah/keckley-elizabe...-1818-1907 You will definitely see that others posted here do not have the same resemblance to these verified ones.

If it's a photo and supposed to be her - she looks very young. Until the age of 30 she was a slave - how likely is it in those days photos were taken of slaves? (A painting could, of course have been painted later from imagination, it's just strange and makes it suspicious IMO that such items remain such "secrets". If authentic they would probably have long been known of in "public".)

Elizabeth was born in 1818, about thirty years before photography was introduced. She was past forty when she worked with Mrs. Lincoln. What are the chances that anyone would have known about her at an earlier age, or even have cared enough to paint an imaginary portrait?

As far as the other spurious photos, even an untrained eye will have a hard time identifying even similar facial structures.

I agree that many of these photographs are not Elizabeth Keckly.
However, since this one is on display at Ford's Theatre, I have always believed it to be an authentic photograph of Keckly:
http://www.gal-dem.com/wp-content/upload...kley-2.jpg
Also, in this photo (above), Keckly is younger and thinner which would account for her appearance being different than that of photos taken in her later years.

Another photograph of Keckly, is this one:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c...ly_UNC.gif

And lastly, I am positive that this is an authentic photograph of Keckly, and it is actually quite similar to the photograph of Keckly on the front of the program cover that Roger posted earlier:
https://static01.nyt.com/images/2013/01/...-popup.jpg

You are quite right as to the last two photos, but many of us believe that Ford's is displaying an inaccurate one. The University of North Carolina has a lot of material on Mrs. Keckly. It might be in their project of Documenting the American South.

She was a very interesting lady, and although it caused an irreparable split between Mary Lincoln and herself, her writings in Behind The Scenes have given historians a lot of historical perspective on life with the Lincolns at the White House.

The markings of her grave here in Maryland, that of Frederick Aiken in D.C., and that of Edman Spangler near the Mudd House are three projects that I am very proud of the Surratt House and Surratt Society for spearheading.