The Prints and Photographs Division of the Library of Congress has three copies of the negative to this photograph by Timothy H. O'Sullivan, the Civil War photographer. The best of the three is shown here( LC-B8171-152-A), and is titled by the LOC as five generations on Smith's plantation, Beaufort, South Carolina. The other two negatives (LC-B811-152) are titled Beaufort, South Carolina. Negro family representing several generations. All born on the plantation of J.J. Smith, Beaufort, S.C. Sullivan visited Smith's plantation in 1862 and made several photographs of its enslaved population. In general, however, O'Sullivan left no records of his experiences and photographs, and the only identifiers are to be found on the notes or captions he scribbled on his negatives. For details on O'Sullivan and his photographs, see James Horan, Timothy O'Sullivan: America's Forgotten Photographer (New York, 1966) and Joel Snyder, American Frontiers: The Photographs of Timothy H. O'Sullivan (New York, 1981).

Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division

O'Sullivan, Timothy H.

English

Image is in the public domain. Metadata is available under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International.

NW0243

North America--South Carolina

"Black Family, Beaufort, South Carolina, 1862", Slavery Images: A Visual Record of the African Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Early African Diaspora, accessed September 30, 2023, http://www.slaveryimages.org/s/slaveryimages/item/638