Augustus Washington

Augustus Washington ( * 1820/1821, Trenton, New Jersey, † June 7, 1875, Monrovia, Liberia) was an African-American daguerreotypist. He emigrated in 1853 from the United States to Liberia. He was not the only color photographer of the time, but one of the few documented well.

Augustus Washington was born in 1820 or 1821. His father was a slave in Virginia. The early deceased mother was supposedly from the Far East. His stepmother was a former slave, she was later described by Washington as a good Christian Indian, white and black ancestry

Washington studied at the Oneida Institute in Whitesboro, New York and at the Kimball Union Academy and then attended Dartmouth College ( 1843). He learned the daguerreotype in the winter holidays 1843. He left Dartmouth College in the fall of 1844 and moved to Hartford in Connecticut, where he in 1846 opened a daguerreotype studio

But he had business success gave all its gains because he saw no future and no appropriate place for themselves in American society. He emigrated in November 1853 with his wife and two small children from West Africa. In Monrovia, the capital of Liberia, he reopened a photo studio and also established temporary studios in Sierra Leone, Gambia and Senegal. He is a 1858 still photographer, then he was Zuckrrohrfarmer on an extended tenure at St. Paul River and gave the photograph to. He was a respected member of society and won a seat in both houses of the Liberian Parliament, the House of Representatives and the Senate. Augustus Washington died in 1875.

Works

Joseph Jenkins Roberts, the first and seventh President of Liberia.

Urias McGill, a merchant from Monrovia.