Delaware Valley Archivists Group

From Dana: The silhouettes used as illustrations in the previous blog entry help to illuminate not only the history of the Deshler-Morris House, but also the culture of nineteenth century Philadelphia.  The silhouettes of David Deshlers and the Perot brothers are part of an album of photographic reproductions housed in the Independence National Park Archives that contains silhouettes created by Joseph Sansom, a famous Philadelphia artist and writer (and also the namesake of Philadelphia’s well-known Sansom Street).  Briefly in the possession of INHP, the album was returned to the original owner by the park and subsequent efforts to determine its current location have been unsuccessful.  As Anne Verplanck argues in her article, “The Silhouette and Quaker Identity in Early National Philadelphia,” silhouette albums like the one cited above provide some insight into Quaker culture in Philadelphia at the turn of the nineteenth century. Elite Quaker families like the Deshlers and Morrises used the silhouette “to achieve specific social ends: to distinguish themselves from non-Quakers and to reinforce bonds of kinship, friendship, and community at a time of internal and external challenges to their religious beliefs,” (42).  While there are no silhouettes of the Germantown Morrises included in the National Park Service’s Morris Family Papers collection, silhouettes do exist of the Canby family, relatives of Martha Canby Morris.  Silhouette of Merritt Canby, pre-1830  While non-Quaker families often chose oil paintings and miniatures for their personal portraiture, silhouettes were clearly the art form of choice for elite Philadelphia Quaker families.  Verplanck cites several reasons for this phenomenon.  First, silhouettes appealed to the Quaker preference for plainness.  Unlike oil paintings, silhouettes were easily and quickly obtained, as profilists were available across the city and the process of creating a silhouette was could be performed within just a few minutes (52).  Silhouettes were frequently made using a machine called a physiognotrace, which allowed a profilist to trace around a person’s face while the mechanism imprinted the silhouette into a piece of paper that could be cut away to reveal the silhouette.  In fact, the Second Bank of the United States, a part of Independence National Historical Park, houses a physiognotrace and visitors can view demonstrations of this amazing machine.  An image of a Park Ranger demonstrating a physiognotrace can be found on the INDE Photos and Multimedia Website. Silhouettes were also typically cut in multiples, allowing for distribution among family and friends. Quaker women then compiled many of these silhouettes into albums, which included not only members of the album creator’s family and social network, but other prominent figures, including devout Quakers, teachers, philanthropists, businessmen, anti-slavery activists, and Philadelphia civic figures.  In this way, Quakers “preserved and interpreted their own history and connected themselves to it,” (42).  The Sansom silhouette album mentioned previously is an excellent example of this phenomenon.  The album not only contains silhouettes of several Morris family members, including Anthony S. Morris, but also renderings of several prominent national figures, including George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and James Madison.  Silhouette of George Washington