Open book spread with a hand-tipped carte-de-visite albumen portrait of Samuel Downing in a gilt frame surmounted by an engraved eagle, facing the opening page of his biographical sketch.

Hartford, Connecticut

Samuel Downing, Carte-de-Visite Portrait and Residence

Rev. E. B. Hillard · N. A. & R. A. Moore, Hartford, Connecticut

Date
1864
Medium
Carte-de-visite
Subject
Portrait
Origin
Edinburgh, Saratoga County, New York

Samuel Downing, aged one hundred and two, was the first subject visited for the Reverend E. B. Hillard's chronicle of the last surviving veterans of the American Revolution. This hand-tipped albumen portrait by N. A. & R. A. Moore of Hartford thus opens the published series, which paired photographic likenesses with biographical sketches. Hillard's accompanying account of Downing paints a picture of continued vigor, recounting a man who at one hundred had yet to use a cane or spectacles and who drew a crowd of a thousand for his centenary.

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