The First Woman Ever Photographed

The Bowery Boys: New York City History

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!