If on every tombstone there could be seen the life‐likeness of the sleeper, as with sparkling eye, and noble mien he walked "a man among men;" or of some gentle lady, whose kindly and generous impulses could be read in every feature of the "face divine;" or of the angel‐child, whose joyous laugh, and innocent smile speaks of the loss to its bereaved and loving parents‐‐and of its passage from earthly to heaven to be the guardian‐spirit of the wandering and the disconsolate upon earth‐how much more inviting would then be the last resting places of the departed,‐‐could we thus seek the "living" among the "dead," and on every tombstone see the living representative of the sleeper. May, 1857 issue of "Hutching's California Magazine" (San Francisco, Vol.1, No. 11)
From the earliest times, daguerreotypes were created for mounting on tombstones. Standard monuments were personalized by attaching a photographic portrait of the deceased. These memorials took the form of a dauguerreotype, ambrotype, tintype, or wet collodian positive on glass and were placed in a sunken niche in the stone and covered with glass. The purpose of the glass was to protect the image from moisture. Several patents for such mounting devices were issued in the 1850s. Morteotype was one of the names applied to this new application of the daguerreotype. It was imbedding the likeness of the form and features of the departed on the tombstone, and making it impervious to the ravages of time by the use of a peculiar kind of cement; which, it was claimed, made the pictures as durable as the marble itself. The invention of the Morteotype was claimed by a New York, Baltimore, Richmond, Lynchburg, Petersburg daguerreian named Jesse Harrison Whitehurst, famous for his portraits and his entrepreneurship. While many companies held patents for devices to attach photographs to headstones, calling them indestructible; sadly they were not indestructible, many falling victim to decay Shades MAGAZINE | www.shadesofthedeparted.com 47