Coburn Academy presents ‘Discovering Eudora Tiffany’

On Tuesday evening, Aug. 22 at 5:30 p.m., the Coburn Academy will feature a talk entitled “Discovering Eudora Tiffany” upstairs in the Coburn Library, located on Main St. in Owego.

For the presentation, Town of Owego Historian Peter Gordon will explore the life, with new maps, original photos, tax records and receipts, of Eudora Tiffany, who lived her entire life in her parent’s house at 739 Glen Mary Dr. in the Town of Tioga.

Eudora married Andrew Burgess, Civil War photographer, who would take over Mathew Brady’s Washington photographic studio in a ceremony in the Owego Presbyterian Church. Burgess acquired significant wealth as a gun designer, with over 90 patents.

On her death, in 1925, Eudora willed an invaluable collection of Civil War era photographs to the Tioga County Historical Society. Mysteriously, 44 more glass-plate photographic negatives, which should have gone to the TCHS, were found at her lawyer’s house, located at 333 Front St. in Owego.

In 1949 these were sold to ANSCO in Vestal, and now reside in the National Archives in Washington, DC. These negatives included never-before-seen portraits of General Custer, and President Grant.

In 2019, the new owner of 333 Front, donated to the TCHS Museum 10 more, previously unseen, glass plate negatives from this collection, including pictures of Eudora and her relatives, and numerous documents which raise questions about Eudora’s will, and the fate of this elderly woman’s estate including six St. Augustine, Florida, properties. These documents deepen the mystery about a couple whose life story has been misrepresented in local and national publications and are the focus of continuing research.