Daguerrian Camera by C.C. Harrison

Description:

Daguerrian Camera by C.C. Harrison, New York, quarter-plate, the rosewood veneered body with champfered front and back, sliding box focusing, hinged top with bone knobs, capacity for two plates, plate-holder, clamp, and a rack-and-pinion brass-bound lens engraved in script No. 385, C.C. Harrison, New York, lg. body 11 in., (original finish worn, replacement screws in flange, and small pieces of veneer missing from back).

Provenance: From the Louisiana family of the original owner. Included with the camera is a short note. "This is the camera that belonged to my great, great uncle, Dr. A. P. Breda. He was a civil war veteran who lost his fortune after the war. My grandmother, Mrs. Helmina Blanchard, who was his great niece, got the camera somehow and gave it to my father." Alexander P. Breda was born in Natchioteches Paris on 19 December 1837, the son of Dr. John P. and Marie Helmina (Dranguet) Breda, the eldest of a large family. He attended the Western Military Institute at Drennon Springs, Henry County, Kentucky, until the school was closed after a breakout of yellow fever in 1853. In 1855, Breda began the pursuit of medicine, initially studying under his father, and then at the University of Louisiana, from which he graduated in 1859. In 1862, he enlisted in Company C, Second Louisiana Cavalry, under Col. W. G. Vincent, for the Confederacy, where he served as a medical assistant, and then as assistant surgeon in the Seventh Louisiana Cavalry until the end of the war. A member of a Masonic fraternity, Breda practiced medicine in his native Natchioteches (in partnership with his father and then independently),and was elected to the Natchioteches police jury until 1889.
Estimate $6,000-8,000

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