Swann Galleries(NEW YORK) — An album containing a previously unrecorded photo of abolitionist Harriet Tubman has been acquired by the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture.
The lot was sold for $161,000, according to Swann Galleries, and the purchase was announced in a statement Friday.
The album, which belonged to a Quaker school teacher named Emily Howland, contains 44 photographs from the 1860s, including two of Tubman and John Willis Menard, the first black man elected to Congress in 1868.
The rare photo of Tubman shows her sitting and much younger than in known images of the Underground Railroad hero. It was taken in Auburn, New York, between 1868 and 1869, when she would’ve been 48 or 49 years old, the lot’s description said.
“It is a distinct honor to have these photographs that tell an important part of America’s history,” Lonnie Bunch, the Smithsonian’s new African American history museum’s founding director, said in a statement. “We are pleased and humbled to work with the Library of Congress to ensure that this rare and significant collection will be preserved and made accessible to the American public.”
Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden said in a statement: “To have a new glimpse of such key figures in American history is rare indeed. Through this extraordinary collaboration, these images will be forever part of our shared heritage and will be a source of inspiration for many generations to come.”
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