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children until the mid-1830s, when the activities of
free blacks were restricted. At that time, educational
opportunities for black students were suddenly limited
due to the white population’s fears about plans that
called for the immediate abolition of slavery. In reac-
tion, Washington briefl y ran his own school for local
African Americans.
Washington was able to further his education at
Oneida Institute in Whitesboro, New York, one of only
a few private schools that accepted African American
students. With the help of abolitionists, he studied there
for over a year before a lack of money forced him to
leave school and seek employment. Washington’s
fi nancial woes would continue to interfere with his
academic dreams.
In 1838 Washington accepted a teaching position in
Brooklyn, New York, at the African Public School. For
the next three years he taught in Brooklyn, contribut-
ing articles and serving as a subscription agent for The
Colored American, a new weekly newspaper written by
blacks for a black audience. He also attended anti-colo-
nization society meetings and organized voting rights
meetings in New York and New Jersey.
Washington furthered his education, fi rst at Kimball
Union Academy in Meriden, New Hampshire, and
later in the fall of 1843 at Dartmouth College, where
he was the only black student. During the winter school
vacation, Washington learned the daguerreotype pro-
cess while visiting family in Trenton. He returned to
Dartmouth, making and selling portraits to help pay his
school expenses. Unfortunately, he did not earn enough
money to continue his studies.
For the next ten years Washington lived in Hartford,
Connecticut, working initially as a teacher for black
children at the North African School from the fall of
1844 to 1846. Later that year, he opened a daguerreotype
studio in Hartford. After the studio had been open a few
months, he moved his operation to the city’s business
district on Main Street. Surviving images from this pe-
riod indicate that his studio catered to Hartford’s white
population, attracting many prominent citizens, includ-
ing Connecticut author Lydia Sigourney and Eliphalet
Bulkeley, a Hartford lawyer and judge.
One of Washington’s earliest and best-known extant
portraits depicts the abolitionist John Brown. Wash-
ington posed Brown in an unconventional manner that
accentuates the subject’s importance. Brown stands
with his right hand raised as if taking an oath, while his
other hand holds a fl ag that might symbolize Brown’s
“Subterranean Pass Way,” his plan for an Underground
Railroad.
Washington generally posed his customers seated,
with the sitter’s right arm resting on a table. Men usu-
ally faced the camera straight on, while women sat at
a slight angle, holding a daguerreotype case, book,
or fl owers. A broadside for Washington’s daguerrean
gallery published in July 1851 boasts that the studio
“... is the only gallery in Hartford, that has connected
with it, a Ladies’ Dressing-Room, and has a female in
constant attendance to assist in arranging their toilet.”
The broadside also mentions that Washington had just
spent three months in New York,... and availed himself
of all the latest improvements in the Art.”
Washington’s commercial success could not offset
the racial problems he and other African Americans
faced in the middle of the nineteenth century. In 1850
Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act, which threat-
ened the freedom of all African Americans. Washington
expressed his dissatisfaction with life in America in a let-
ter published in the New York Times writing, “Strange as
it may appear, whatever may be a colored man’s natural
capacity and literary attainments, I believe that, as soon
as he leaves the academic halls to mingle in the only
society he can fi nd in the United States, unless he be a
minister or lecturer, he must and will retrograde.”
In 1850 Washington married Cordelia Aiken. He
searched for a better place to live with his family, and
considered relocating to Canada, Mexico, the West
Indies, British Guiana, or various countries in South
America. In spite of his previous involvement with anti-
colonization efforts, Washington ultimately decided to
immigrate to Liberia under the auspices of the American
Colonization Society. Since its founding in 1816, the
American Colonization Society, a private philanthropic
organization, had worked to relocate freeborn and eman-
cipated blacks to Liberia on the west coast of Africa. In
1847 Liberia became an independent republic, run by
many former African Americans.
In November 1853 Washington closed his success-
ful daguerreotype studio in Hartford, Connecticut, and
with his wife and two young children sailed for Liberia
on the Isle de Cuba. He began making portraits shortly
after he landed, and his business was an immediate suc-
cess, selling roughly $500 worth of portraits during his
fi rst fi ve weeks of operation. In a letter to John Orcutt,
Traveling Agent of the American Colonization Society,
Washington wrote: “I put my price down to what people
consider cheap, $3 for the cheapest picture, and when
I am able to work I go to my room and take some 20,
30, or 40 dollars worth of pictures in a day. I have hired
boys whom I send to tell as many as I can attend to.”
Washington planned to spend six months of the year
working as an artist and the remaining six months as
a merchant.
Washington’s Liberian work is more varied in both
style and subject. For his portrait photographs, Wash-
ington used several different poses. He photographed
Liberia’s President Stephen Benson in a near profi le. A
series of portraits attributed to him, depicting members
of Liberia’s senate, are much less formal than traditional