Studio bust portrait albumen of Captain Francis Lee Higginson. Unmarked. Approx. 9 5/8 x 12 3/4 in. cardstock mount. Period pencil identification to recto upper margin. 

A fine studio portrait of Francis Lee Higginson, a captain of the all-Black 54th Massachusetts Infantry and the 5th Massachusetts Cavalry (Colored). 

Francis Lee Higginson (1841-1925) was the son of George Higginson (1804-1889) and Mary Cabot Lee Higginson (1811-1849). Mary Cabot Lee Higginson was the great-great-granddaughter of John Cabot (1680–1742), who settled in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1700, establishing his family as successful merchants. During a particular high point for the influential and wealthy Cabot family, it was popular to say, “And this is good old Boston, The home of the bean and the cod, Where the Lowells talk only to the Cabots, And the Cabots talk only to God.”

Raised in Boston, Francis Lee Higginson was 19 years old at the onset of the Civil War. In 1863, following his graduation from Harvard, Higginson served as a white commissioned officer in the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry; following the formation of the 1st Kansas Colored Volunteer Infantry Regiment, the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry was the second all-Black regiment in the United States Army. Organized in March 1863 by Robert Gould Shaw (1837-1863), the son of a notable Boston abolitionist, the 54th Massachusetts was composed primarily of free Northern Blacks, including two sons of iconic abolitionist Frederick Douglass.

On 30 January 1864, Higginson was promoted to captain of the 5th Massachusetts Cavalry Regiment, USCT. A sister unit to the 54th Massachusetts, the 5th Massachusetts was authorized by Governor John Andrew (1818-1867) as a Black cavalry regiment. In May 1864, the regiment was assigned to guard Confederate prisoners at Point Lookout, and the following month, it participated in the Siege of Petersburg. It returned to Point Lookout following the siege, where it remained until March 1865. In April, the regiment rejoined troops near Petersburg and was among the first Union soldiers to enter Richmond. After participating in the occupation of the Confederacy’s former capital, the regiment was then moved to Texas to provide support against Confederate forces led by General Kirby Smith (1824-1893), arriving after his surrender in Galveston. Higginson was discharged from military service on 31 October 1865.

Following the war, Higginson worked at Lee, Higginson, and Co., his family’s investment bank in Boston. According to the 27 August 1925 issue of Springfield Weekly Republican, Higginson also served as “president of Suffolk Savings Bank for Seaman and Others, president of the Boston & Lowell railroad, an overseer of Harvard College, trustee of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and of the Massachusetts General Hospital and the Massachusetts Humane Society.”
 

Married twice and the father of four children, Higginson died on 19 August 1925 in Beverly, Massachusetts; he is buried near Boston, in Cambridge, in Mount Auburn Cemetery. 

[Civil War, Union, Confederate] [Photography, Early Photography, Historic Photography, Daguerreotypes, Ambrotypes, Tintypes, Cased Images, Union Cases, Albumen Photographs, CDVs, Carte de Visites, Cartes de Visite, Carte-de-visite, Cartes-de-visite, CDV, Cabinet Cards, Stereoviews, Stereocards] [USCT, United States Colored Troops, Glory, 54th Massachusetts, Buffalo Soldiers, Black Soldiers]  [African Americana, African American History, Black History, Slavery, Enslavement, Abolition, Emancipation]