Freedom, 8 Cents at a Time – the Story of Moses Williams

Before photography, when portrait painting remained expensive but technology was changing how people saw the world, silhouettes – the shadow-like images created from projections and paper – were having a moment. A craze, in fact. Affordable, reproducible, and surprisingly faithful, silhouettes served as valued reminders of friends, family, and loved ones, and Jefferson displayed several at Monticello. Hoping to take advantage of a growing market, renowned portraitist, Charles Willson Peale, used a newly-invented device to simplify their production. Peale hoped his silhouette-making service would attract visitors to his private museum in Philadelphia, PA, driving revenue from both sales and admission. But it was perhaps his young enslaved servant Moses Williams, who learned to operate the new machine and took a cut (so to speak) from each sale, that profited most, using his income to buy his freedom and build a livelihood and a home.