In the mid-1980’s I purchased this sixth plate daguerreotype from Maine dealers Charlie and Rayma Guarino, who died within months of each other in the early 1990’s. It was sold as a portrait of Sarah Gammon Bickford, a black woman, born into slavery, who inherited two thirds of the Virginia City, Montana water system from her white husband, and then purchased the other third. Next, after taking correspondence courses in business management, Bickford modernized the system and made it more efficient. She was sole proprietor of the Virginia City water system for many years.

Because I was still curious about the portrait, I found out from the Guarinos that a Montana antiques dealer had consigned the image to them. I contacted that dealer, and he put me in touch with the local Montana family who had owned it for many generations. I spoke with several generations of that family in one extended phone conversation; they were all convinced that the photograph was a portrait of Sarah Gammon Bickford. Next, I called the town librarian, and she too was certain the image was of Sarah.

In 1994, Matthew Isenburg was working on an article for the Daguerreian Annual entitled “An African-American Portfolio.” At his request, I submitted several images, including the one of Sarah Gammon Bickford. I decided to research Sarah Gammon Bickford in depth to assist with the article. I spoke with my sources one more time; they all assured me that the woman in the portrait was Bickford.

But after receiving a photocopy of another portrait of Bickford from the town librarian, I began to suspect the daguerreotype I had purchased was not of Sarah Gammon Bickford. To my eye, the facial features just did not match. The librarian referred me to a book entitled Pioneer Trails and Trials - Madison County, Montana, compiled by Madison County History Association, which I purchased, and that confirmed my suspicions. Sarah Gammons Bickford was born in 1855 — about the time this daguerreotype was made.

So Matthew and I decided to put the image into “An African-American Portfolio” without any identification as to the sitter. Then a remarkable coincidence took place. In the same issue of The Daguerreian Annual 1994, there was an article by Bruce T. Erickson entitled “A Mammoth Plate Daguerreotype in Hawaii: The Result of a Diplomatic Indiscretion.” Bruce is a scholar of early photography in Hawaii and had been employed by the Bernice P. Bishop Museum in Honolulu at one time. In his article were likenesses of the same sitter as in the daguerreotype I had submitted. Bruce perused his copy of The Daguerreian Annual 1994, and when he saw the “Bickford” image, he (in his own words) “stopped dead in (his) tracks!” He did not realize it was the same sitter as in his article for she was older in my image, but he recognized her as Hawaiian. He went to the Bishop Museum and “asked the Archives Department staff for an opinion. They all agreed on her ancestry as Hawaiian, but there was no conclusive agreement regarding her identity.”

And then, in Bruce's own words: “A few days later on a completely unrelated matter, I opened Joan Abramson's Photographers of Old Hawaii and there she was on the inside flap of the dust jacket...” Further research revealed that she had appeared in the article “A Mammoth Plate Daguerreotype in Hawaii” in the same issue of the Daguerreian Annual. She was identified as Victoria Kamamalu, Hawaiian Princess. As Bruce wrote in an article for The Daguerreian Annual 1995, entitled “A Re-identification of an African-American Portrait in the 1994 Annual”: “What are the odds of a genuine Hawaiian princess randomly appearing twice in a Daguerreian Annual?' much less any publication? Finally, he writes in the same article “The larger — and still unsolved — mystery is how did the sixth-plate daguerreotype of Victoria Kamamalu arrive in Montana, where a family sold it to the dealer from whom French acquired it?”

The main source on Sarah Gammon Bickford is Pioneer Trails and Trials: Madison County 1863-1920, compiled by the Madison County History Association (Great Falls, Montana: Blue Print and Leather Company, 1976; Bicentennial Edition).

There is also an on-line article about Bickford on BlackPast.org, available here:

http://www.blackpast.org/?q=aaw/bickford-sarah-gammon-1855-1931

The relevant articles in The Daguerreian Annual are:

Bruce T. Erickson, “A Mammoth Plate Daguerreotype in Hawaii: The Result of a Diplomatic Indiscretion,” in The Daguerreian Annual 1994 (Pittsburgh, PA: The Daguerreian Society, 1994).

Bruce T. Erickson, “A Re-identification of an African-American Portrait in the 1994 Annual,” in The Daguerreian Annual 1995 (Pittsburgh, PA: The Daguerreian Society, 1995).

See also Joan Abramson, Photographers of Old Hawaii (Norfolk Island, Australia: Island Heritage, 1981; 3rd trade edition).