Ellie Reichlin’s own supervisor discouraged her from researching the daguerreotypes’ subjects.

Evidence

Dr. Reichlin said that she became determined to find out who the people were in those photos, and why they were stashed away at the Peabody. He also shared that Ellie’s boss at the time did not want her to do this research, which was ironic since he was the person who asked her to catalog all the museum’s holdings, and that was how she discovered the daguerreotypes in the first place. — Tamara Lanier, From These Roots, 728