Huntingdon borough

Oldest Photo

Did you know the oldest American photograph still in existence was made by a man from Huntingdon, with a cigar box?

Joseph Saxton was born here in 1799. At eighteen he was apprenticed to David Newingham, a Huntingdon silversmith, watchmaker and engraver. When he set off for Philadelphia he carried a letter from his neighbour John McCahan, who published the Huntingdon Gazette, saying he was a lad of good character and very ingenious.

Daguerre's process reached America in print in the autumn of 1839. Saxton read the accounts, improvised a camera out of a cigar box and an ordinary reading glass, and on 16 October 1839 took a picture with it from a second-storey window of the Mint, where he worked. It caught Philadelphia's first Central High School and the State Armory.

The Smithsonian's study of him calls that plate perhaps the earliest daguerreotype ever taken in the United States, and says it certainly is the oldest American daguerreotype still in existence. It is held by the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

He spent the rest of his working life in government service: machinery at the Mint, then curator of weights and measures, then from 1843 until his death in 1873 superintendent of weights and measures for the United States Coast Survey.

From the record

Passages about this subject, quoted from county histories now in the public domain. Each one names the book and the position in the text so it can be checked. Spelling is as printed.

It is regularly laid out and contains about 120 dwellings, a court-house and a jail. A court of common pleas and general quarter sessions is held here the second Monday In January, April, August and November. It is 150 miles W.N.W. of Philadelphia." By the act of incorporation the first borough officers were named as follows : Joseph Cc^ill, chief burgess ; George McClellan, burgess ; Robert Patterson and Michael Foncannon, burgesses' assistants; James Robertson, town clerk ; Jeremiah Daily, high constable. It was further provided that these officers should serve until the first Monday in May, 1796, when the first borough election should be held. A supplementary act, approved by Governor Snyder on February 6, 181 1, provided for the election, "on the Friday next preceding the third Saturday of March next, and on the same day in every year hereafter," of a chief burgess, an assistant burgess, five reputable citizens to be a town council, and one reputable citizen to be a high constable.John W. Jordan, ed., History of the Juniata Valley and Its People (New York: Lewis Historical Publishing, 1913) · character 337,167 of the scanned text

Checked against the record. SOURCE UPGRADED from Wikipedia to the Smithsonian's own published study of Saxton, by Arthur H. Frazier, 1975. The page was already careful and its central claim survived; three things changed. AGE CORRECTED, or rather un-asserted. The page said he "went to work at twelve as an apprentice to a watchmaker." Frazier says: "When he was eighteen years old, Saxton was serving an apprenticeship under David Newingham, a local silversmith, watchmaker, and engraver, in his native village of Huntingdon, Pennsylvania." That places him in the apprenticeship at eighteen and gives no starting age at all, so twelve is not shown - and it is not refuted either, because an apprenticeship recorded at eighteen could have begun years earlier. The page now says what the source says and names the master, which it could not do before. DATE SETTLED. The page hedged between "around September 25 or October 16". Frazier gives 16 October 1839 flatly. The hedge is no longer needed. SMALL EMBELLISHMENT REMOVED. The page had him at "the window of his office". Frazier says a second-storey window of the Mint, and says nothing about whose office it was. HEDGE MADE MORE PRECISE, IN BOTH DIRECTIONS. Frazier's sentence is carefully built and the page now mirrors it: the plate is "perhaps the earliest daguerreotype ever taken in the United States, and certainly represents the oldest American daguerreotype extant." Perhaps for the taking, certainly for the surviving. The page had been weaker than the source allowed on one half and is now exact on both. ADDED, and it is the reason to run this story at all: the cigar box and the ordinary reading glass, and the letter of recommendation from John McCahan of the Huntingdon Gazette. A county newspaperman vouching for a local boy is how the oldest surviving American photograph starts.

Sources