Many of Washington's sitters were prominent and successful Hartford citizens. Eliphalet Adams Bulkeley was the founder of the Aetna Insurance Company.
Ref. # X.1960.193.2 N

Eliphalet Bulkeley's wife Lydia wears a dark dress. Augustus Washington advised his female sitters to wear "dark dresses, silks, alpacas, muslins" since these are "most suitable to produce a beautiful drapery."
Ref. # X.1960.193.1 N

Like many members of his generation, Charles Edwin Bulkeley, the young son of Eliphalet and Lydia Bulkeley, grew up to serve in the Civil War. He died in Alexandria in 1864.
Ref. # X.1960.193.3 N1987

A niece of Eliphalet Bulkeley, Sarah Taintor Waterman married a sea captain and was shipwrecked with him off the coast of China, where they were most likely murdered by pirates. Sarah was twenty years old at the time of her death. Two photographic copies of Washington's daguerreotype of her are in a Bulkeley family album in the Graphics Collection.
Ref. # X.1995.95.0 N

Hildah Welles Wolcott was reputedly the oldest woman in Connecticut at the time of her death in 1860. Born in 1760, she would have been a young woman at the time of the American Revolution.
Ref. # 1964.118.7 N

Chloe Holcomb Cornish died in 1837, before the invention of photography. This daguerreotype is based on a painted portrait, made before her death. This practice was not uncommon. An advertisement for the Washington Daguerrean Gallery states that "portraits, engravings and other Daguerreotypes [will be] neatly copied."
Ref. # 1969.14.1 N1997

Many daguerreotypists are anonymous today, since they rarely signed their work. Augustus Washington is an exception to this rule. Not only does his name appear stamped on the brass mats of his daguerreotypes; some of the cases enclosing his daguerreotypes also bear the imprint: "Washington Daguerrean Gallery."
Ref. # X.1960.192.0