Photo Record
Images
Metadata
Catalog Number |
1805.060.021 |
Collection |
Photographs of Union & Confederate Officers-Collection of Bvt Lt Col Meade |
Object Name |
Album, Photograph |
Date |
n.d. |
Description |
The Photographs of Union and Confederate Officers in the Civil War in America - Collection of Brevet Lieutenant Colonel George Meade U.S.A. contains one photograph album assembled by George Gordon Meade, Jr., (1843-1897) the second son of General George Gordon Meade (1815-1872). Meade, Jr., began collecting photographs during the Civil War. From the end of the war until his death in 1897, he continued this work and compiled the photographs in a scrapbook, carefully annotating each image. Meade, Jr., collected these photographs with the initial goal of amassing a collection of all the commanding officers in the Battle of Gettysburg in July 1863. He acquired his collection by requesting images through correspondence with photographers and soldiers or their relatives. For more information regarding the background of the album, see the Foreword and Preface to "Photographs of Union and Confederate Officers in the Civil War in America: Collection of Bvt. Lt. Col. George Meade U.S.A," published by The Civil War Library and Museum of Philadelphia in 1996. The publication is available under call number "E468 .M21." The album contains 74 pages, some double-sided, and includes 1,054 individual catalog entries. There are 924 images, including carte-de-visites of soldiers who fought during the Civil War and additional photographs from camps, of buildings, and of one sketch by C. Cusick of Fort Sully. Fifty-five empty spaces were cataloged because they served as placeholders for additional portraits of soldiers, identified by pencil markings around the spaces. The first nine pages of the album contain photographs of both Union and Confederate soldiers who fought at the Battle of Gettysburg in July 1863. The majority of the remaining pages include portraits of officers from the Union forces who served in the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps during the Civil War. There are also nine pages of Confederate soldiers (8-9B, 12-14), four pages of cadet portraits from the United States Military Academy at West Point (34B-36), one page of foreign observers (36B), one page of relatives of General George Gordon Meade (34), and one page featuring Meade's staff at his death in 1872 (37). In total, 911 individuals are featured in the album, some in multiple photographs. Each photograph in the album is labeled with names, military titles, and additional information regarding those individuals who died during the Civil War. In the catalog entries, all abbreviations for names were expanded if research provided this information. If full information was not found, the abbreviations were recorded as they originally appear in the album. Military titles and information regarding those who died was recorded as it appeared in the album; it was not fact-checked through additional research. In the "Errata" section on the last page of "Photographs of Union and Confederate Officers in the Civil War in America: Collection of Bvt. Lt. Col. George Meade U.S.A," published by The Civil War Library and Museum of Philadelphia in 1996, five photographs are identified for individuals who were in labeled, but empty, spaces throughout the album: Charles S. Wainwright (1805.060.021.03AC) David J. Nevin (1805.060.021.05AM) Edward D. Muhlenberg (1805.060.021.06AB) Dunbar R. Ransom (1805.060.021.07B) Robert H. Fitzhugh (1805.060.021.07F) Two photographs for individuals with labeled, but empty, spaces throughout the album remain missing: Elijah D. Taft (1805.060.021.07D) James F. Huntington (1805.060.021.07E) Three notes regarding misidentifications also appear in the "Errata" section. Only one misidentification was corrected. Entry 1805.060.021.08BF depicts Union Admiral Charles Wilkes, not William Smith as noted in the original album. The other two misidentifications in the "Errata" section were not verified, but notes were added to the catalog entries to include the possibility that they were misidentified (1805.060.021.12BJ - Maxey (Maxcy) Gregg and 1805.060.021.22AL - Powell T. Wyman). The last note in the "Errata" section is related to entry 1805.060.021.13AB, which is indeed a photograph of Robert S. Garnett. It was misidentified for years outside of this album as a photograph of Richard B. Garnett. |
Legal Status |
Owned by The Civil War Museum of Philadelphia. |
Multimedia Files |
Click here to view the alphabetical index to the Photographs of Union and Confederate Officers in the Civil War in America - Collection of Brevet Lieutenant Colonel George Meade U.S.A. album. Click here to view the numerical index to the Photographs of Union and Confederate Officers in the Civil War in America - Collection of Brevet Lieutenant Colonel George Meade U.S.A. album. |
Search Terms |
Photographs of Union and Confederate Officers - Collection of Bvt. Lt. Col. George Meade U.S.A. |