The Kaplan Daguerreotype of Abraham Lincoln

The Forensic Evidence

In 1987, a photographic print of an exceptionally high quality daguerreotype of a robust, confident-looking, and smartly dressed young man was brought to my office in Paris on, interestingly, Lincoln's birthday, February 12 (Figure 1a). The owner of the daguerreotype, which had been purchased from a gallery in New York City in 1977, was Mr. Albert Kaplan, an American then residing in Paris. Mr. Kaplan was convinced, after years of personal research, that the young man pictured in the daguerreotype was Abraham Lincoln. He had sought me out to subject his conviction to the science of my medical specialty.

This daguerreotype, referred to as the Kaplan (Figure 1a), dates from the early 1840s {1,2,3,4}. Born in 1809, Lincoln would have been in his early 30s. Hitherto, the earliest known photographic portrait of Abraham Lincoln, known as Meserve #1, was made in 1848 when Lincoln was 39 years old (Figure 1b) {5}.