Volume 3, Issue 1 - June 2005

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This Week in Civil War Photography

Civil War photographer George Barnard dies at his daughter's home in Syracuse, NY from "malignant brostatitis."

Volume 3, Issue 1 - June 2005


Table of Contents "New" 1863 Gettysburg Image Surfaces Unpublished Images of Gardner’s “Captain Huff” Series Mission: GNMP Negative Scans Fourth Annual “Image of War” Seminar

"New" 1863 Gettysburg Image Surfaces

Previously unknown Civil War photographs continue to surface, even images by the conflict’s most famous photographers at the war’s most famous battlefields. This issue of Battlefield Photographer puts a spotlight on “new” Gettysburg photographs from the gallery of Alexander Gardner, including 1865 images by Gardner photographer William Morris Smith (see accompanying article) and the magnificent plate presented on our cover, which was taken by Timothy O’Sullivan.

This large plate photograph of the temporary Gettysburg office of the U.S. Sanitary Commission at the Fahnestock Brothers store on Baltimore Street first surfaced in 1997 when collector Jeff Kowalis identified and purchased a mounted albumen print at the annual Gettysburg relic show. Another print, owned by the New York Public Library, recently surfaced online in the library’s new digital gallery. The Center has arranged with the library to reproduce the image here. It is the first time this image has been published on the printed page. This uncropped, unmounted album print, is a variant of the previously known stereoscopic version of the same scene, and it shows considerably more of West Middle Street than the stereo image. Although the negative no longer exists, the uncropped print undoubtedly shows all or nearly all of the scene captured by the negative. Both images are dominated by the building that housed the dry goods store of the Fahnestock brothers, James, Henry and Edward. “The building still stands today, although it has been greatly altered,” said Gettysburg author and licensed guide Tim Smith, who first spotted the image on the Internet in early 2005 after reading about the library's new digital gallery.

On the roof at the rear of the building is a small, enclosed area that was used as an observatory during the battle by General Oliver O. Howard. “Gen. Howard was on top of that building when he learned that Gen. [John] Reynolds was killed in the first day’s fighting and that he had assumed Reynolds’ command,” Smith said.

The large plate image also differs from the stereo with the presence of the supply wagon of the 2nd Division, Sixth Corps, facing south as if prepared to leave for the southern portion of the battlefield. The wagon parked along the south side of Middle Street, just beyond the gas lamp post (gas street lamps arrived in Gettysburg in 1860), may be the Gardner’s Gallery photographic wagon, based on the rumpled tarp hanging from the rear of the wagon, which was wrapped around the darkroom operator and tied at the legs to seal out light. To the right, one block to the north up Baltimore Street, is the town square.

The large plate image also reveals a number of the dwellings on the north side of the first block of West Middle Street that cannot be seen in the stereo version. The first house beyond the Fahnestock store, visible in both versions, is a rental property owned by Moses McClean, followed by the Joseph Little house. Just past the Little house is a small cottage owned by Harvey D. Wattles. The fourth house down is an ornate, steeply roofed house that “still stands today and recently has been renovated to its Civil War appearance,” Smith said. “It was restored not on the basis of this photo, but based on a World War I photograph.” The home was used as an officer’s club during the first world war, when the military established Camp Colt, a tank training camp, on the fields of Pickett’s Charge. The camp commander was Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, who would make Gettysburg his home years later.

“This photograph, along with several other photographs, also make it clear that Baltimore Pike, like Chambersburg Pike, was macadamized,” Smith said. “You can clearly see the crushed stone in the image.”

Unpublished Images of Gardner’s “Captain Huff” Series

By Garry E. Adelman

Tens of thousands of people and numerous dignitaries flocked to Gettysburg for the ceremonies commemorating the July 4, 1865 laying of the cornerstone for the Soldiers’ National Monument—the centerpiece of Gettysburg’s Soldiers’ National Cemetery. It is surprising, therefore, that an event that drew so many people attracted so little photographic coverage. Only Alexander Gardner, who had recorded the first photographic images of the Gettysburg battlefield two years earlier, is known to have captured the ceremony or anything associated with it. The extent of Gardner’s coverage, which includes at least twelve large-plate images, is detailed in William A. Frassanito’s, Early Photography at Gettysburg (Thomas Publications, 1995). Gardner recorded images of the Cemetery, a Gettysburg street scene, and the 50th Pennsylvania Infantry, which was in Gettysburg for the event.

What Frassanito calls “the most puzzling aspect” of the 1865 series, however, is the extensive coverage by Gardner photographer William Morris Smith of the camp of a Captain John J. Huff, who Frassanito speculates was probably in charge of the commissary support for the festivities. Representing Gardner’s Gallery, Smith recorded at least five negatives at the camp. Frassanito included two of these images in EPG and noted that three more existed. These three are presented here, and are published for the first time on the printed page.

Gardner plate #247, “Gettysburg, Pa., July 1865, Camp of Captain J.J. Hoff,” negative by William Morris Smith [Library of Congress].

Gardner #247 is nearly identical to that reproduced on page 216 of Early Photography. It shows Huff’s camp on the northern slope of Steven’s Knoll, with the wooded Culp’s Hill in the background. Captain Huff reclines on a boulder in front of the tent at right that serves as the backdrop for the following two portrait images. Gardner’s darkroom wagon appears at extreme left.

Gardner plate #361, “Gettysburg, Pa., July 1865, Captain John Huff,” negative by William Morris Smith[Library of Congress].

#361 shows Captain Huff seated upon the same rock as in the previous image. The rock, the end of the rail fence, and the tent with distinctive pieces of wood at the base of its center pole, all establish the location of these close-up images as the same seen in the general views of the camp. Under magnification, “Capt. J.J. Huff” is visibly written on the left side of the tent. Captain Huff appears in all of the images of this series except the following portrait of his clerk.

Gardner plate #488, “Gettysburg, Pa., July 1865, Capt. John J. Huff’s clerk,” negative by William Morris Smith [Library of Congress].

#488 shows Captain Huff’s clerk on the same boulder. He, like Huff, appears in four of the five images (but with his coat off in the other views). In #247, he is leaning against the center pole of the tent.

All five images of Huff’s camp are credited to photographer William Morris Smith. Whether Gardner was actually there when the images were recorded has not been established. Gardner was in Washington days later for the hanging of the Lincoln conspirators.

Mission: GNMP Negative Scans

By Denise Campbell

During his tenure as Chief Historian of the Gettysburg National Military Park in the mid-20th century, Dr. Frederick Tilberg documented the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) and Works Progress Administration (WPA) activities through scores of photographs, many he took himself. Some 1,000 negatives from this era are now part of the Center for Civil War Photography’s archives, and I have been scanning them to create a permanent backup archive and to be able to easily reproduce and use the images.

The words “mission” and “project” became common under Dr. Tilberg’s leadership, and many negatives are marked in white paintstick with a “Mission” or “Project” number. Many list “Tilberg” as the photographer. Within the collection are photos of culverts, road improvements, and fence/wall refurbishings, as well as before-and-after vista photographs showing brush removal. These vistas are the most interesting to me. They document how much the park changed from the 1930s-1960s, when most of the photos were taken, to the present.

For example, this October 1947 photo (shown below, magnified and cropped) looks down on the 17th CT Monument from East Cemetery Hill. The change is striking when compared to the modern view. The collection also includes negatives of funerals of World War II and Spanish-American war veterans in the National Cemetery, site preparation for construction of the Cyclorama, visits by Boy Scouts and other groups and dignitaries, the auto junkyard on Baltimore Pike, vandalism to monuments, and at least one photo, “Meade’s headquarters today,” used by Dr. Tilberg in his 1954 handbook, Gettysburg National Military Park.

Interestingly, no negatives are dated 1963 but quite a few are dated later. I wonder what treasures would had surfaced if negatives from the battle’s centennial year were included!

This scanning mission is slightly less than half complete. Each negative takes about six minutes to scan, crop, and save to CD. This does not include any photo enhancing; many could use some of digital refinement. I dedicated one of our home computers to this mission because uncompressed TIFF image files scanned at high resolution can quickly fill a hard drive. The project is time-consuming, but it is time well spent. It is fascinating to magnify some of these images to see past the culverts, etc. into the backgrounds. GNMP is truly ever-changing, and the scanning mission I’ve undertaken confirms it!

Original Photo

Modern Photo

Fourth Annual “Image of War” Seminar

By Bob Zeller
President, Center for Civil War Photography

John Hennessy wows the group near the Sunken Road.

A scorching summer day made for hot work on the Spotsylvania Battlefield for those who attended the fourth annual Image of War seminar August 27-29 at Fredericksburg-Spotsylvania County, Virginia. But the heat did not prevent more than 50 participants from trooping around the areas of heaviest fighting on the Spotsylvania battlefield under the guidance of tour guide David L. Richards, who gave a mesmerizing description of the battle.

It was the third year in a row in which the summer weather decided it would invite itself to our gathering. The seminar was plagued by heat at Antietam in 2002 and rained upon in Devil’s Den at Gettysburg in 2003. Hopefully the move to autumn and the Oct. 7-9 weekend for this year’s seminar in Richmond will yield spectacular fall weather.

Our opening activities on Friday evening, August 27, were highlighted by a warm welcoming speech from Robert Hagan, chairman of the Spotsylvania County Board of Supervisors, which also graciously provided the buses for our Saturday tour. Garry Adelman and John Cummings provided a photographic introduction to the Fredericksburg-area battlefields and CCWP member John Kelley delivered his fascinating talk about photography in the Chancellorsville campaign, Embedded with the Troops.

Our Saturday tour, in addition to the Spotsylvania tour, included a morning tour of Fredericksburg led by John Hennessy with Eric Mink, and an early afternoon tour of Chancellorsville and the Wilderness, headed by Adelman and Michael Vallone. The annual evening banquet included a review of post-war photographs of the area battlefield by Eric Mink, who showed many unpublished views and the now-traditional CCWP Raffle, our most successful yet.

Seminar patrons flock to the raffle table.

The Sunday schedule was particularly busy in 2005, with morning programs by William Gladstone, who shared a lifetime of knowledge about the carte de visite, and Ron Coddington, who talked of how his interest in collecting cartes de visite led to a regular column in Civil War News and the authorship of his first book, Faces of the Civil War. After lunch on the lawn of the Spotsylvania courthouse, the seminar shifted to the Massaponax Church and another outstanding hands-on demonstration of wet plate photography by Rob Gibson. For many, this was the highlight of the seminar, especially since we had the opportunity to tour the church and see the incredible proliferation of soldier graffiti on the interior walls in the back, right around the window from which Timothy O’Sullivan took his famous photographs in May 1864 of Gen. U.S. Grant meeting with his fellow commanders.

At the end of the 2005 seminar, many conference attendees chose to make the optional trip to Civil War Life – The Soldier’s Museum, operated by Terry and Jane Thomann. Terry first suggested that our seminar visit Spotsylvania and was instrumental in arranging for assistance from the county. The Center continues to actively work with Terry to install a 3-D theater at his museum for the summer 2005 season.

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