She is the earliest known photographer on the West Coast of the present-day United States.

[1] Epifania de Guadalupe Vallejo was born on August 4, 1835, at the Mission San Francisco Solano in the Alta California territory of Mexico.

She grew up on Lachryma Montis, the sprawling Vallejo estate in present-day Sonoma, California.

[1][2] In 1851, when she was 15 years old, she married 26-year-old US Army Captain John Blackman Frisbie.

[1][2] Epifania de Guadalupe Vallejo died of pneumonia on February 14, 1905, aged 69, in Cuautla.