EMINENT WOMEN (1884): TWELVE WOMEN AND THE PHOTOGRAPH THEY NEVER TOOK

These days, with a multitude of photo editing apps, we can make almost anything happen in the pictures we take. In the 19th century, way before Photoshop, photographers also manipulated images —although their techniques were much more labor-intensive than just pressing a few buttons. 

Eminent Women is one such photograph. It features twelve women– including  Louisa May Alcott and Harriet Beecher Stowe– arranged in a group, but they never sat down together. Some of them likely never even met each other. That this group portrait was created speaks to the fame each woman enjoyed at the time.

Our new interactive site devoted to Eminent Women is now live! Check it out here.

Eminent women [graphic] Boston: The Notman Photographic Co. Limited, 3 Park St., 1884. 1 photograph:  albumen on card mount.     

Sybil Hurlburt Luddington, Sarah Hurlburt Bushnell, and Susan Hurlburt Grennell were triplets who lived well in their eighties. Even in old age, they were in good health and remained occupied with “some profitable and healthful employment.” Their resemblance to one another was thought to be rather striking, according to the profile of the sisters accompanying their portrait in the American Phrenological Journal (September, 1858), and the anonymous author of the article refers to the sisters collectively in their physical description. The Hurlburt triplets were considered extraordinary in part because all three showed “great vitality.” The author was also “happy to report that they all bid fair for many more years of usefulness.” Usefulness, likely taken here to mean productive capacities, is identified as the measure of age. The Hurlburt triplets exceptionality depended on the belief that women of their age were not typically productive.

Hurlburt triplets. Sybil Hurlburt Luddington. Sarah Hurlburt Bushnell. Susan Hurlburt Grinnell [i.e., Grennell]. Triplets, now seventy years of age. [New York? : s.n.] [1858?]