cartes-de-visite (card photographs)

Portrait: Shows Dougal in a suit, sitting with his arm on a padded arm rest; a 'negative preserved' of William H. Dougal. Photograph by George W. Dennigau.

Portrait: John B. Wilson, in a coat, with his right arm on a covered table on which there also sits a hat.

Carte de visite photograph of the antislavery activist, feminist, and social reformer Sojourner Truth. The "shadow" refers to her photographic image, which she sold to raise money for her various progressive causes.

The William Oland Bourne collection in the New-York Historical Society's Manuscripts Department includes correspondence, papers, broadsides, and unpublished manuscripts related to his work as a social reformer, editor and author in New York City during the 1850s and 60s. Through his publication, The Soldier's Friend, he sought to aid disabled soldiers by offering prizes to those who had lost their right arms in combat during the American Civil War and had learned to write with their left hands.