Emily Howland photograph album. American Civil War 1861-1865.

Civil war era carte-de-visite album featuring portraits of abolitionists, politicians, soldiers and teachers. People represented include William Henry Channing, Lydia Maria Child, John Willis Menard, Wendell Phillips, Abby and Julia Smith and Charles Sumner and Harriet Tubman. Also includes portraits of Princess Dagmar, Charles Dickens, Emperor Maximilian of Mexico, Tom Thumb and his wife, Lavinia, and Fanny Seward.

An inscription located on the front flyleaf reads: "To Miss Emily Howland, from her Friend Carrie Nichols, January 1st, 1864, Camp Todd, Virginia."
Album most likely presented to Emily Howland by her friend Caroline N. Lacy (1838-1898) who was working at Camp Todd, Virginia during the time Howland was there. Lacy's portrait appears on p. 13 of the album.
Includes 44 albumen cartes de visite, 4 tintypes with paper frames mounted into album pages and 1 matte collodion print (depicting Harriet Tubman) loosely inserted at the back of the album.
Album has gauffered edges and two buckle clasps. Covers are leather on embossed boards.
This album is owned jointly by the Library of Congress and the National Museum of African American History, Smithsonian Institution.
Emily Howland (1827-1929) was born near Sherwood, New York, to Quaker parents Slocum and Hannah Howland. Her lifelong activism was formed early on by the influences of her abolitionist parents. Slocum Howland used the family home in upstate New York as a waystation on the Underground Railroad. Emily's eagerness to contribute to the welfare of African Americans brought her to Washington, D.C., in the late 1850s, where at age 30, she began teaching at Myrtilla Miner's school for African American girls. From 1864 to 1867 she volunteered at freedmen's camps near Washington, D.C., nursing and teaching former slaves. This experience led her to purchase property at Heathsville, Virginia where she offered land to newly freed families and built a school within the community. The Howland Chapel School, opened in 1867, existed, with her unwavering support and the efforts of the local African American residents, until it was subsumed under Virginia's public school system. The building is registered as one of Virginia's historic landmarks.
Purchase; Swann Galleries; 2017; (DLC/PP-2017:061).