Discovery of the Boyden Daguerreotype and Camera

 In the summer of 1991, while scouring an Orange County, California, flea market for collectible photographs, I purchased an ordinary daguerreotype portrait of a man with a distinctive and somewhat craggy countenance. The subject’s name was scrawled on the back of the plate in early 19^th century script, and subsequent research into the name revealed that this was one of the earliest existing photographs of New Jersey’s celebrated inventor, Seth Boyden. My research into Boyden’s life and work also brought to light a persistent and puzzling assertion that Seth Boyden “produced the first daguerreotype in this country.”
            According to established history, the daguerreotype, now recognized as the world’s first practical form of photography, was first produced in America in the late summer of 1839. While there have been discussions that the famed inventor Samuel Morse, and others, might have experimented with daguerreotypy earlier that year, every accepted history of photography tells us that D.W. Seager, of New York City, was the first American to receive public recognition for producing a daguerreotype in this country, in September 1839.
            The name Boyden, on the other hand, is completely unfamiliar to photohistorians–and he has certainly never been listed in any recognized photohistory as a contender for having made the first daguerreotype in America.
            While researching the source of the “first daguerreotype” claim, I contacted officials at the New Jersey Historical Commission, who invited me to apply for a grant so that I could come to New Jersey and investigate the matter on Boyden’s home turf. My contact at the Commission also informed me, to my astonishment, that Boyden’s original camera still existed, in the collection of the Newark Museum
            Working under a grant from the NJHC, I traveled to Newark in May 1991, where I was afforded the opportunity to view and photograph Boyden’s amazing creation. I also visited the imposing Boyden statue that sits in the park across the street from the Newark Museum. On the plaque at the statue’s base, the mystifying declaration was once again displayed: “Produced the first daguerreotype in this country.”
            After a week in Newark and several months of additional research, I published the paper, Seth Boyden: Unsung Pioneer of Photography, which I later presented to the Historical Commission and other organizations concerned with New Jersey history.
            The newly published paper Seth Boyden's Daguerreian Camera, is a more thorough and scholarly examination of the subject, based on my 1991 research and enriched by newly discovered revelations about the beginnings of photography in America.