Augustus Washington:
Teacher/Headmaster of Talcott Church’s Black School, Artist, Businessman, Missionary
Augustus Washington was born in 1820 in Trenton, New Jersey. He was an American photographer and daguerreotypist. He was born as a free person of color. Washington was a teacher and headmaster at the Talcott Street Church school for black children. He owned his own daguerreotype studio on Main Street in Hartford, a successful business that attracted historically significant patrons such as John Brown and Lydia Sigourney. He also migrated to Liberia because he had lost faith in America’s will to integrate African Americans as equals. He passed on June 7, 1875.
Profile of woman, daguerreotype by Augustus Washington
Courtesy of The Connecticut Historical Society
Washington’s Gallery Broadside
Courtesy of The Connecticut Historical Society