The Library of Congress announced on Tuesday that it has conserved and digitized a previously unrecorded portrait of Harriet Tubman. The portrait was taken between 1867 and 1869, when she lived in Auburn, N.Y.



“Other iconic portraits present her as either stern or frail,” Lonnie G. Bunch III, the founding director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, said in a statement. “This new photograph shows her relaxed and very stylish.”

So why are we just now seeing the photo? 

According to TIME, the portrait of Tubman was part of an album of 48 rare photographs previously owned by Emily Howland, a Quaker schoolteacher and abolitionist who lived 20 minutes south from Tubman in Sherwood, N.Y. The Library of Congress and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture acquired the photos at an auction in 2017. 

To see Tubman seated in a parlor chair sporting a lace collar and elegant bodice seems very fitting to her role as the conductor and leader of the Underground Railroad. This picture was found after a century; imagine what other photographs are waiting to be discovered.