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<\/a>The ancestor who was born earliest that I have a picture of is William Denman, the migrant ancestor from England, who was born in 1763 and died in 1858.\u00a0 The picture was described by a granddaughter as having been taken in his nineties and that he walked to her house to present it to her.\u00a0 Priscilla Denman (later married to an Eller), his granddaughter, wrote:\u00a0 “He endured many privations as one of the first settlers of this country, but his iron constitution endured them all well & at the age of 90 years he was hale & hearty; walking 4 miles to present me with his photograph, which I still have in a good state of preservation. He died at the age of 95 & 1 month.” So, although I don\u2019t have a precise date for when the photograph was taken, it likely was between 1853 and early in 1858.\u00a0 If Priscilla was accurate that William was 90 years old when he gave her the picture, it would have been taken sometime in 1853.\u00a0 And she would have been about 12 or 13.<\/p>\nI have two pictures of ancestors that are both the oldest pictures in terms of when they were taken (I think) and also the oldest ancestors of whom I have a picture (in terms of when they were born). The …<\/p>\n<\/a>The second picture I have is actually a daguerreotype, although several sittings were made, of a group of Coffin family members.\u00a0 In the back, standing, are Zebulon B. Coffin<\/a> and his wife Catherine Justice Coffin<\/a>.\u00a0 Sitting in front, left to right, are Abigail Butler Coffin<\/a>, Cyrus Coffin, and Susan Wilcox Justice<\/a>.\u00a0 The Coffins are Zebulon\u2019s parents and Susan Justice is Catherine\u2019s mother.\u00a0 This sitting had to have been done between July 25, 1850 (when Susan\u2019s husband Jesse Justice died) and August 23, 1858 when Abigail Coffin died.\u00a0 Cyrus was born in 1782 and Abigail in 1783, so they were about 20 years younger than William Denman when this picture was taken.\u00a0\u00a0 I am assuming that it was after the death of Jesse Justice, since otherwise I would have expected him to also be in the picture.\u00a0 So far I have no other clues to help date the picture, but I\u2019ll continue to look.\u00a0 I do have other pictures and daguerreotypes (some of which I think might have been taken at the same time as the group picture) which may help narrow the time.\u00a0 The post I wrote about Abigail so long ago included this picture and my speculations at that time about when it might have been done.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"