Anonymous American Photographers

half-plate daguerreotype, sealed, cased, inscriptions in a contemporary hand in ink inside the rear cover, circa 1850

Stanley B. Burns, Mirror Mirror: The Burns Collection Daguerreotypes (New York: The Burns Archive Press, 2012), pl. 114

The present daguerreotype pictures the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Medical School class of 1852-53. The man third from left, top row is identified by inscriptions inside the case as John Gilmore Minor.  The university catalog for that year notes that John G. Minor attended the following university schools: Chemistry, Medicine, Physiology, Surgery, and Anatomy. The catalogue lists his residence as Albemarle County, Virginia.  Minor eventually practiced medicine in Bridgewater, Virginia in 1887.  Daguerreotypes from this period with seated and identified medical students are rare.