Description
The collection of cased photographs comprises 32 photographs, mostly portraits of the extended Youle family, a British merchant
family residing in Recife,
Brazil, in the mid-nineteenth century. Included are 14 daguerreotypes, 18 ambrotypes, one tintype, and two albumen prints. While
the makers of most of the photographs in the collection are unidentified, three daguerreotypes that did not originate with
the Youle family were made by Fredricks and Weeks in Recife in 1851.
Background
Alfred Phillips Youle, one of the few sitters identified in the collection, was born in London in 1824. He was one of the
ten children of Peter Youle (London, 1788-London, 1863) and Ann Jones Shepherd Youle (1788-1873). It is not known when Alfred
Phillips Youle arrived in
Brazil, but by 1851 he had already joined his older brother Frederick and George Deane as a partner in Deane, Youle & Company, commission
merchants whose transatlantic trade included sundries such as sugar, preserved meats, and spirits. Alfred Phillips Youle returned
to London sometime in the 1860s, and by 1872 he was named to the first board of directors of the Great Western Railway Company
Limited, the "Greitueste," which was formed to build railway lines in Western
Brazil. He was also on the board of directors of the Conde d'Eu Railway, Limited in Parahyba,
Brazil.