Documenting the history of an ambrotype

[murray_the_k]

Hello all. I'm new to the forum so i would like to first say hello. Second, the reason i cam here is because i have a question. There has been this ambrotype in my family for years. It's of a relative of mine who help a photographer set up his camera and made sure it was in proper working order. He took a picture of her with the coat that her owner was going to wear in the picture just to make sure it would show up. However her owner got very angry and ordered her husband to hang her, just to make sure the other slaves didn't get uppity. My Grandma tells me that her grandma told her that the owner therw away one of the pictures but the photographer, who was a northener, broke one of the picture cases and stuck her picture in it and gave it to her childern because he felt as though it was his fault. This story has been in the family for years and i want to keep it that way. Is there someway i can get some sort of historical documentation to catalouge this story?

 

[Mike Wilde]

I woud consider a read of 'The History of Photography' for a review of the time line of when Ambrotype was active as a photographic process, and hwat was involved. I am about half way though that book, and it is a very intersting read. I would put the chance of an ambrotype being the type of image made places the photograph as being made after 1855, and it would be unsual to see them being made after 1870, by which time tintypes were much more often being the medium of choice of travelling photographers.