The Brady studio daguerreotypes make up only a small portion of our Brady holdings. Additional photographs were acquired in the 1940s, when the Library purchased several thousand Civil War era negatives, many of which were made under the auspices of the Brady studio. In 1954, the Library acquired the remains of Brady's Washington studio, the "Brady-Handy Collection," which contained negatives and prints, as well as a few daguerreotypes.
Many of the daguerreotypes held by the Prints & Photographs Division (P&P) came to the Library with manuscript collections. There is textual material in the Manuscript Division which relates to our holdings, such as the papers of Clara Barton, Frances Benjamin Johnston, the Feinberg-Whitman collection, and the American Colonization Society collection. Additional related pictorial material from such collections may also be held by P&P.
Additional information about the American Colonization Society can be found in the African American Perspectives, Pamphlets from the Daniel A. P. Murray collection, 1820-1896. The 351 pamphlets contained in this collection were assembled by Daniel Alexander Payne Murray (1852-1925), an African American bibliographer and historian who worked at the Library of Congress from 1871 to 1923. The pamphlets pertain mainly to slavery and the abolitionist movement.
The Learning Page lists these and other online resources at the Library of Congress related to this collection, Daguerreotype Portraits and Views 1839-1864.
Many museums and historical societies have daguerreotypes in their collections. Some of the larger or more well-known collections are listed below: