Brady met Morse, almost certainly learning the Daguerrotype process from him, shortly after Morse’s return to New York from Paris. James and Whitman both posed for their portraits with Brady, whose assistants took care of the mechanics of picture-taking, and both wrote afterwards of the encounter. Gardner, O’Sullivan and Barnard were sent out by Brady to record Civil War scenes. Brady himself did not know what his middle initial stood for. Census records suggest that he may in fact have been born in Ireland, rather than New York state as he later asserted.