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ab a 197 b As described in the preface, a persistent claim that Allen and Hosea Grosh were daguerreotype artists has caused their names to appear in numerous authoritative lists of early photographers. We offer the following discussion to evaluate—and ultimately to discount—the assertion that the brothers were engaged in this endeavor. In the opening decade of the 1900s, ’49er Edwin A. Sherman wrote his lengthy memoirs, in which he included a story of how he guided a company of gold seekers across Mexico. Major portions relative to California were published in 1944.1 Sherman used “notes and memory” for the writing, with annotation later provided by his son Allen. A paragraph in Sherman’s published recollection can be regarded either as an important piece of additional information about the Grosh brothers story, or as a misleading tale based on a false recollection. Sorting out the difference is a challenge, but the exercise is important because some secondary sources, based on the strength of Sherman’s recollection, have listed the Grosh brothers as daguerreotype artists.2 In writing of leading the “Camargo company” of gold seekers across Mexico in 1849, Sherman included the following passage in his memoir: [In the central Mexico city of San Luis Potosí we were] guests in peace, or prisoners of war, according to the conditions and circumstances. . . . We were detained there ten days but lost nothing by it. The inhabitants had not learned of the discovery of gold in California; and that we had crossed the Sierra Madre was a miracle to them. And strange as it may seem, no one in that city had ever heard of or seen a daguerreotype! Taking the two brothers, Hosea B. and Allen E. [sic] Grosh, daguerreotypists with me, I called on the governor and had them show him the daguerreotypes, taken in Tampico, of General La Vega and others, and told him that if he would sit for them, we would be very much pleased. He was delighted as well as surprised. The Groshes looked for a back room in which they could fix up a dark closet for their chemicals—quicksilver , bromide, and iodine for development—then back for their camera and fixa p p e n d i x b The Recollection of Edwin A. Sherman 198 a appendix b ings. When they returned, the governor sat for his picture. It was successful from the start, and when the daguerreotype was finished and put in a fine case, he was in ecstasy, and was still more astonished when it was presented to him. He then had daguerreotypes taken of his whole family, which he insisted on paying for. The Groshes had such a run of business that their stock of plates and chemicals was exhausted. At the drug stores they could procure only a limited supply of the chemicals. The governor wanted to know what the plates were made of. On being told that they were made of thin copper, plated with silver, he asked, “What is to prevent more being made entirely of silver?” Being informed that there was nothing to prevent but the expense, he sent for the druggists in the city to supply what chemicals they could and set the silversmiths to hammering and rolling out silver plates, cutting them up and polishing them. The Grosh brothers were kept hard at it for a whole week, until the chemicals were entirely exhausted and they had to close business.3 Sherman wrote in some detail of his efforts in 1849, when he was twenty years old and a veteran of the Mexican-American War, to organize three companies of gold seekers in Pennsylvania. Joining the final group, the Camargo company, aboard the brig Thomas Walter, he ventured forth to seek his fortune in California.4 The brig sailed on February 1. The Reading California Association , in which Allen and Hosea Grosh were members, left Philadelphia for Tampico four weeks later on February 28. They had sent their heavy cargo ahead on a ship that would sail around Cape Horn, the southern tip of South America.5 Benajah Jay Antrim of Sherman’s Camargo company kept a journal and sketchbooks while crossing Mexico, recording their arrival in San Luis Potosí on April 22 and departure at 5:30 a.m., Sunday, March 25. He was planning a series of paintings of Mexico to create a public exhibition, for which he made watercolor paintings of the countryside. After trying his hand at mining...

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