People, Locations, Episodes

Thu, 09.21.1820

Augustus Washington, Photographer born

*Augustus Washington’s birth in 1820 is celebrated on this date. He was a Black abolitionist and photographer specializing as a Daguerreotypist.

From Trenton, New Jersey, he was the son of a former African slave and an Asian woman. When his mother died when he was young, a stepmother, a former African slave, raised him. Washington struggled to obtain schooling, first in Trenton.  He later attended the Oneida Institute in Whitesboro, New York, Kimball Union Academy in New Hampshire, and Dartmouth College. In 1843, Washington moved to Hartford and opened a Daguerrean studio to help finance education (image). After finishing school in 1847, he returned to Hartford and opened a studio for a short period of time. During this time, many of his portraits were of political and social figures of the era and reflected his sentiment about American slavery.

In 1851, in a letter to the New York Tribune, he expressed pessimism about the prospects of Blacks in American society.  In 1853, he immigrated to Liberia as a schoolteacher, farmer, stone operator, and Daguerreotypist. One year later, he expressed enthusiasm about his adopted land in a letter, stating, "I believe that I shall do a thousand times more good for Africa." The last reference to Washington's work as a daguerreotypist dates from 1858.

Washington never regretted his decision to immigrate to Liberia, and when he died in Monrovia on June 7, 1875, his death was mourned as “a severe loss to Western Africa.”

To Become a Photographer