In this portrait of an unidentified woman and child, the adult has held her pose during the exposure time. Her hair, face, and even the details of her dress are crisply captured. The child at her side must have changed her facial expressions during the session and her face is more a blur. Posing for photographs was not easy.

Pierre Toussaint (1766-1853)

Few of the salt prints donated by Hodges in 1944 came with descriptions, and in the case of this portrait, the information given is incorrect. On the back of the print, a handwritten caption by an unknown writer states: “The Moore Family’s faithful old servant – a slave.” Pierre Touissant was not a servant to the Moore family, and while he was an enslaved person for part of his life, by the time he posed for the photograph, he had been a free man for over 40 years.

Toussaint came to New York from Haiti (then Saint-Domingue) in 1787 with his enslavers, the Bérards. In the City, he was trained as a hairdresser by a Mr. Merchant and became a popular stylist for the ladies of the time. After the death of Jean-Jacques Bérard and the loss of the sugar plantation in Haiti, it was Toussaint’s income on which the widow Marie Bérard depended for the rest of her life (almost 20 years). When Marie died in 1807, Pierre became a free man and he chose the last name Toussaint in honor of the Haitian Revolution hero Toussaint Louverture. Toussaint was Sarah Ann Moore’s hairdresser. This is how Tousssaint, a Moore family friend by then in his 80s, came to pose for her brother Nathaniel’s portrait.