Hector

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Description:

Ambrotype surrounded by a gold metal border of Hector, an enslaved man at Gowrie Plantation on Argyle Island in Georgia. Hector is seated in front of the photographer with a mailbag over his shoulder, a newspaper in one hand, and an oar in the other. According to Hector's enslaver, Louis Manigault, he was phographed like this, to show his position as the plantation boatman who collected the mail. Manigault wrote on the bottom, " 'Hector' Gowrie post boy. Taken in Savannah, Ga. April 23, 1861."

Long after the Civil War was over, Manigault wrote an additional note about Hector and this particular image, "From being of a most happy and cheerful disposition, prior to the war, this man became dull and low spirited when freedom came, and finding himself no longer with a master to care for him. Though alive, in 1890, yet his existence appears to be a wretched one. In this picture I had him taken with his paddle in one hand and a newspaper in the other, with the Gowrie plantation mailbag over his shoulder."

Gift of Joanna Stewart Jenkins.