TIL About Caesar, A 115 Year-Old American Slave And Also One Of The Earliest And Oldest People Ever Photographed, Who Was Forced To Work Until Age 80

From Wikipedia:

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.

202 points · 11 comments · view on lemmy.world

11 Comments

FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world · 77 pts · 84d (3 replies)

There's a better copy of the image if you click through to the Wikipedia article.

SalamenceFury@piefed.social · 6 pts · 83d (2 replies)

He does not look a day over 70. Black does not crack, indeed.

arrow74@lemmy.zip · 13 pts · 83d (1 reply)

He probably wasn't. From my understanding his age cannot be confirmed. People do lie to have clout even 200 years ago.

Or more simply the rely on memory which is not trustworthy. He outlived everyone who knew his birth year. All he had to do was say I think I'm xx years old and then he was

But we can of course hope

AI_toothbrush@lemmy.zip · 3 pts · 83d

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.

Uranus_Hz@lemmy.zip · 44 pts · 84d (1 reply)

I, too, will be forced to work until I’m 80.

altphoto@lemmy.today · 4 pts · 83d

Let's take another selfie for posterity.

Cris_Color@lemmy.world · 17 pts · 84d (4 replies)

What does manumitted mean?

FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world · 22 pts · 84d (2 replies)

It means to be released from slavery, and sadly, Caesar was distinctive in that way too.

Cris_Color@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 84d (1 reply)

Thank you for explaining. This is a good post

FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world · 14 pts · 84d

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.)

lobut@lemmy.ca · 10 pts · 84d

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.

paranoia@feddit.dk · 1 pts · 84d
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