Solomon Nunes Carvalho
Solomon Nunes Carvalho (April 27, 1815 – May 27, 1897) was an American painter, photographer, author and inventor.[1] He may be best known as an explorer who traveled through the territory of Kansas, Colorado and Utah with John C. Frémont on his fifth expedition. Many famous images of the Old West are based on images he made, although many others have been lost or confused with those taken by Mathew Brady and other contemporaries.[2]
Solomon Nunes Carvalho
Early and family life[edit]
He was born in 1815 in Charleston, South Carolina to Sarah Cohen D'Azevedo and her husband David Nunes Carvalho, who were both born in England to Jewish families of Portuguese descent. He was named for his grandfather (1743-pre-1811), who had escaped persecution in Portugal and lived in Amsterdam before finally settling in Britain, from which his two sons would emigrate to Barbados and then America.[3] This Solomon's father, David Nunes Carvalho would help establish the first Reform Jewish congregation in the United States, the Reformed Society of Israelites, in Charleston in 1825.[4] His brother (Solomon's uncle), Emanuel Nunes Carvalho, was a cantor and rabbi in Barbados, Charleston and Philadelphia, where he died in 1817. By 1840, David Nunes Carvalho had moved his family to Philadelphia, where they lived in Mulberry Ward with a free black servant.[5] According to family tradition, the younger Carvalho studied with Thomas Sully.
Isaac Leeser (1806-1868), hazzan of Congregation K.K. Mikveh Israel married Solomon Nunes Carvalho and Sarah Miriam Solis (1824-1894) on October 15, 1845 in Philadelphia.[6] By 1850 they lived with his father and family in Baltimore, and had a son David and daughter Charity.[7] Solomon Carvalho considered his Jewish identity important as he traveled through the Atlantic coastal states on business. He was a board member of the Philadelphia Hebrew Education Society in 1849–1850. The following year, he became a member of New York's historic Congregation Shearith Israel, in whose cemetery (established that year), he would ultimately be buried.[8] Solomon and his wife Sarah would help found Baltimore's Beth Israel Sephardic synagogue, although it disbanded in 1859. Sarah also founded the Baltimore Hebrew English Sunday School (before financial reasons led the family to relocate to New York City) and a small synagogue in Harlem (the Hand-in-Hand Congregation) in 1870.[8]
Death and legacy[edit]
Solomon Carvalho died in 1897 in Pleasantville, Westchester County, New York, and is buried in historic Beth Olom cemetery[17] in Ridgewood, Queens County, New York.[18] His son David Nunes Carvalho (1845-1925) would become a famous paper, ink and handwriting analyst and author,[19] with his forensic work acknowledged by Arthur Conan Doyle, although his testimony at the second trial of Alfred Dreyfus (that Major Esterhazy wrote the treasonous notes) would fail to acquit the accused officer.[20]
Carvalho is considered a pioneer in travel photography as were, for example, Francis Bedford, George Wilson Bridges, Maxime Du Camp, and Francis Frith.[21] Carvalho's words, "Emigration is a gate to the Salt Lake Valley, veiled in obscurity, and unknown to the citizens of the United States" – Solomon Carvalho 1852, were memorialized on Emigration Canyon Monument in one of Salt Lake City's parks.[22] A historic marker dedicated to Col. Fremont and Solomon Carvalho's contribution was raised on Wild Horse Butte in Utah.[14]
Filmmaker Steve Rivo made a documentary film entitled Carvalho's Journey, that was released in 2015 and has aired on PBS.[23][24]