"My lord, the sum of all I know I have disclosed."  Richard III

  Actually, I was reading some work of local history on Mecklenburg County, Virginia,
when I came across the story (legend.)  Apparently, a family of English people, mother, son,
and several daughters settled in M'bg Co., perhaps in Chase City,
about 1830 and set up an academy.  The son, looking for work
sojourned for a while in Farmville, Prince Edward County, where I
read he produced a daguerreotype of one of his sisters in 1839.  He
later went on to become a distinguished professor of medicine at
Columbia University at mid-century.
  This story was so far from my own center of interest when I read
it, I have never followed it up, do not remember the people's names,
and cannot attest to the truth of the matter.  Perhaps someone
more learned it antebellum history can confirm or deny the account
I have related above.

Date sent:              Thu, 10 Jan 2002 21:59:13 -0500 (EST)
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Subject:                Re: confirmation of a term
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Send reply to:          Discussion of research and writing about Virginia history
        <[log in to unmask]>

> Having worked in the photographic industry for close to 20 years and
> thought I knew the technology history of photography this is the first
> I've ever heard of someone in the U.S. ...not to mention Va. having
> developed a photographic process in 1839. Beaumont Newhall in his book The
> History of Photography site the earliest know images were developed by Sir
> Humphrey Davy for his friend Thomas Wedgwood (son of the potter), they
> were not permanent. Joseph Niepce of France develop a process using a
> highly polished metal plate with a solution of bitumen of Judea ( an
> asphalt like material) in 1826...by 1835 Daguerre had modified the process
> and improved on it.  The father of modern photography is William Henry Fox
> Talbot . He perfected the process of imaging using silver nitrate. This is
> the process that is basically still in use today. That was in 1835. By
> 1845 calotype negatives were being used to produce photographic
> images......almost all of the images shot by Civil War photographers was
> done using Collodion negatives (invented by Frederick Archer of England in
> 1851) . Tintypes invented by Hamilton Smith of NY in 1856 were still used
> during the Civil War period because they were so easy and fast to make.
>
> This is the first I heard of someone Va. developing a process....What's
> his name?
>
> Bill Buser
> former VP of an Eastman Kodak Company
>
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Harold S. Forsythe
Assistant Professor History
Director:  Black Studies
Fairfield University
Fairfield, CT 06430-5195
(203) 254-4000  x2379

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