Caesar (c. 1737 (supposedly) – 1852) was a slave who is notable for possibly being the earliest-born person ever photographed while alive, when his daguerreotype was taken in 1851.[1] He was also the last slave to be manumitted in New York.
There’s a better copy of the image if you click through to the Wikipedia article.
He does not look a day over 70. Black does not crack, indeed.
He probably wasn’t. From my understanding his age cannot be confirmed. People do lie to have clout even 200 years ago.
But we can of course hope
I mean, looking at the timeline he was probably still over 100. Of course this could mean anything between 100 and 115 or technically he could be 200 for all we know. There are strange cases in churches for example where looking back at the records there should be 150+ yo people but most of these are proposed to be cases where two people are noted down with the same name and they miss the birth of one and miss the death of one. There are even tombstones that claim such long lives. Only with modern technology can we actually confirm the ages of people now, especially with digital records. For a while now the last people who were born in the 19th century are dead which makes confirmation easier with the years.
I, too, will be forced to work until I’m 80.
Let’s take another selfie for posterity.
What does manumitted mean?
It means to be released from slavery, and sadly, Caesar was distinctive in that way too.
Thank you for explaining. This is a good post
You’re welcome. It’s a sad bit of history. I’ve been down a rabbit hole recently about super-centenarians. (And kind of salty that the oldest verified who ever lived was a rich French lady who never had to work ever.)
To add onto this, I had to look up:
Daguerreotype[note 1] was the first publicly available photographic process, widely used from the 1830s to 1850s. “Daguerreotype” also refers to an image created through this process.
