__________________ "I want to bury myself in a den of books. I want to saturate myself with the elements of which they are made and breathe their atmosphere until I am of it."
--Lew Wallace, 1885
Thank you for re-directing me, and that is an excellent biography on your gg grandfather. And I just realized this. The quote that you use as your signature is none other than the Lewis Wallace of Ben Hur fame. It is a wonderful quote and pretty much my sentiments with respect to the ambiance of literary works! :-)
Please accept my belated thanks for contributing the wonderful photograph.
Here is another picture from the Museum of the Confederacy book: a hand-coloured ambrotype of two soldiers, the man on the right being Lieut. John Taylor Temple of Co.B, 30th Virginia Infantry.
Hey Martin: I don't have any ancestors who fought in the war. You seem to have quite a few of them. Mind if I borrow one old buddy, ya fellow hoosier ya.....?
Always wanted to be able to say I had an ancestor in the war...It's great that you even have photos of some of them... ya lucky dog...
Terry
What an exciting new thread! Thanks again, Bill, and to you, Martin, for allowing us a glimpse into your own family history. It is another chance for all of us to step back in time and try to understand a bit more about these people who chanced everything they held dear to form a new country built on the original premise of the founding fathers.
__________________ Thea
No one has permission to use any material from any of my posts on any CWT forum, the archives, or any other forum without my express written permission.
Another image from the Museum of the Confederacy. This is of Captain William Worsley Mead, who served in the 2nd and also the 6th Virginia Cavalry. He lived until 1894.
I've got a technical question. The letters on Captain Mead's hat (IC?) are mirror imaged. Is this the result of photography technology in the Civil War era -- in other words, are most or all Civil War photos in fact mirror images without our realizing it, or is the photo anomalous in this respect?
BTW, what's "IC" (or "1C") stand for? (I would have thought First Cavalry (assuming it's "1C"), except that he apparently wasn't in the First Cavalary.)
I'm no technical expert on photography, so don't hold me to this, but my understanding is that certain processes - such as the daguerreotype - always produced a reversed image. The camera effectively acted like a mirror.
With the ambrotype, I believe that the way in which the negative was mounted in the case determined whether you got a reversed image or not. But I'm not certain about this.
When the image is clearly reversed, does this mean that you can flip it over by manipulating a digital image of it? Yes, but bear in mind that many soldiers knew their images were going to be reversed and therefore wore some accoutrements the wrong way round in order to get the "right" result.
The letters on Mead's hat are "LC". The book cannot decide whether this stood for "Loudoun Cavalry" or "Leesburg Cavalry".
Once you start looking for it, you should notice reversed lettering on hundreds of civil war portraits.
Here is a link to a photograph of Edward Clarence Shepherd, taken while he was a V.M.I. cadet. He looks so magnificently martial that it seems a shame to disclose the fact that, when a Lieutenant in the 2nd Virginia Infantry, he was cashiered for cowardice at 2nd Manassas.
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