Dorothy Catherine Draper is a truly forgotten figure in American history. She was the first woman to ever sit for a photograph — a daguerrotype, in the year 1840, upon the rooftop of the school which would become New York University.
Catherine was the older sister of professor John William Draper, later the founder of the university’s school of medicine. The Drapers worked alongside Samuel Morse in the period following his invention of the telegraph.
The experiments of Draper and Morse, with Catherine as assistant, would set the stage for the entire history of American photography.
The legendary portrait was taken when Miss Draper was a young woman but a renewed interest in the image in the 1890s brought the now elderly matron a bit of late-in-life recognition.
To see the photograph of Draper and other early photography, visit our website.
This episode originally appeared on Greg’s podcast called The First which had a respectable run a few years ago. The feed for that show will be going away soon so we wanted to present some of that show’s greatest hits over the next few months, in between regular episodes of the Bowery Boys as bonus stories about American history. Enjoy!
#167 Cleopatra's Needle and the Freemasons Secret
#166 General Slocum Disaster 1904
#165 Ladies' Mile
#164 The Astor Place Riot
#163 South Street Seaport
#162 George Washington Bridge
#161 Fire Department of New York (FDNY)
#160 Tompkins Square Park
#159 The Broadway Musical: Setting the Stage
#158 Hotel Theresa: The Waldorf of Harlem
#157 Early Ghost Stories of Old New York
#156 The Boy Mayor of New York
#155 Sesame Street to Seinfeld: NYC TV 1969-2013
#154 New York in the Golden Age of Television
#153 NYC and the Birth of Television
#152 Bellevue Hospital
#151 The Limelight: Church, Nightclub and Mall
#150 Consolidation! Five Boroughs, One Big City
#149 John Peter Zenger and the Power of the Press
#148 The Great Blizzard of 1888
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