James R. Chilton. Autograph Letter Signed. NY, Nov. 18, 1839. 1pg.+ address leaf. To Prof. Samuel St. John, Western Reserve College, Hudson, Ohio.
A physician who worked as an “operative Chemist” at his shop at 263 Broadway in New York City, earning several distinctions in the early history of American photography, Dr. Chilton here sends a receipt for boxes "containing the apparatus... the carbons and the flask of Quicksilver ware.... “I found it took longer to get the various articles together than I expected…” Articles he had procured but not yet sent included “Graduated Bell Glass”, Muffle and Cupples, Iron Ladle, Gold Leaf Electrometer, Naptha & Bottle, Copper & Bottle, Ammonia and Bottle, and India Rubber Bags.”
After the details of Daguerre’s discovery reached New York in early September 1839, Chilton sold the essential supplies (and perhaps the first available American copies of Daguerre’s French booklet on the “Procedes du Daguerreotye”) to D.W. Seager, George W. Prosch, William H. Ellet and Samuel Morse (of telegraphic fame), all credited with producing the first photographic images in the United States Seager also displayed his photo of St. Paul’s Church, which he claimed to have produced as early as September 16, as Chilton’s shop, citing Chilton as reference for his subsequent public lectures on the Daguerre process. Whether or not any of these men can be definitively called “the first American photographer”, all were closely linked to Chilton, who had his own claim to fame the following year as “publisher of the first separate book of photography in America”, a 16 page pamphlet sold at his shop, now of great rarity, which gave an English translation of Daguerre’s instructions, suggested American improvements on the Frenchman’s process, and an exposure table prepared by Seager. Later, Chilton partnered with Morse in backing the first American commercial photographers. While this letter was not written to a photographic pioneer, the recipient, an Ohio Professor of Chemistry, Geology and Mineralogy, had an achievement of his own a decade later. In 1849, when Charles Foster wrote his “Gold Placers of California” – considered the first published guide of overland travel to the Gold Rush region - St.John wrote an appendix on ”Gold, how known, where found, how assayed”, possibly the very first technical advice available to Forty-Niners.