Ambrotype Portrait of the Brown family of Honolulu, c. 1858

Portrait of the Brown family of Honolulu, full-plate ambrotype, c.1858, sitters' cheeks tinted, period koa wood frame. A fine portrait of Captain Robert Wilcox Brown (1809-1894) and his extended family, taken in Honolulu. Brown was born in Ledyard, CT, and was a sailor on several whaling vessels. In April 1850, he took his family to sea on board the North Star, sailing via the Azores, St. Paul Island in the southern Indian Ocean, Western Australia, and the Timor Straits, reaching Honolulu in October, 1851. Brown bought a plot of land in Nuuanu Valley, settled his family, and continued to sail in the North Star and the Black Warrior. The present photograph shows his family in Honolulu, around 1858: from left, his brother-in-law John Heppingstone, daughters Amanda, Annie, and Mary, wife Charlotte (née Heppingstone), daughters Charlotte, Edith, and Alura. The photographer of this group portrait can only be guessed at; pioneering Hawaiian photographer Hugo Stangenwald sold his business in the spring of 1857, and it is not clear when Joseph W. King started operating from the same premises. An E. D. Durant may have been taking photographs in Honolulu in the interim (Abramson, Photographers of Old Hawaii). Provenance: a niece or nephew of Captain Brown (manuscript note pasted on reverse identifying some sitters.