Private Sneden; Master Story Teller Finally Heard

JPK Huson 1863

Brev. Brig. Gen'l
Joined
Feb 14, 2012
Location
Central Pennsylvania
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Private Robert Knox Sneden, Cavalry Battle at Gettysburg, 1863
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This is like a teaser, Private Robert Knox Snedon, Army of the Potomac map maker, was also a brilliant teller of events unexpectedly, inexplicably through art and words and line and form and once in awhile through swabbed, water colored trees, clouds and dirt. During his years as a POW Snedon turned out an incredible collection of maps-slash-newspaper headlines-slash- current events-slash-illustrated bio.

Thanks to Tom Elmore and James N for the head's up, fell down another endless and fascinating wormhole- or does one fall up?

Up. Found a map ( like someone misplaced the thing ) on LoC later identified as a ' Sneden ', by our members, thankfully. If you value your imaginary free time please, please do not go look up what in blazes a Sneden might be. Good Grief. You'll simply go away for a long time.

Long threads are understandably not popular. Honest, not because I'm bringing his story here, it's just a little long- honest, SO worth it.

Private Robert Knox Sneden's work and story is destined to be one of my all-time, hand's down favorite era topics. Thanks so hugely for the introduction- and it transpires Dad had a copy of " Images From The Storm ", a veritable war time autobiography drawn, painted, sketched and penciled by Private Seden through his war. But wait! There's more! Unbelievably, the man had time to write a journal of sorts too. Not sure I'll read it- when you've gotten a good look at his maps and drawings, paintings and moving, living, breathing moments in Time you'll understand. He's already said everything you want to hear. A second collection, " Eye Of The Storm ", is filled with more specific images.

Before a thread gallops off to specific information it's helpful to illustrate what all the fuss is over- in this case a Union Army map maker with a pronounced gift for telling a story- his and ours. Somehow, he told the war through maps and tiny images, soldiers the size of dust, charred homes within pen tips, a famous sea battle in pen and ink doodles on a crumbling and faded, azure bay.

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From LoC. Many Robert Knox Sneden images carry a warning via the books on permissions- LoC and Virginia's Historical Society released quite a few to all of us, thanks so very much!
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How cool is this? The whole battle, the entire story, is here.
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Crazy, crazy good. The doomed Alabama- the Kearsage and the pesky Deerslayer skipping outside Cherbourge Harbor. It's all here.
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" Captured in northern Virginia by Confederate forces in November 1863, Union mapmaker Robert Knox Sneden of the Army of the Potomac spent the rest of the war in a series of POW camps, including Camp Lawton in Georgia. During his captivity he made sketches and took notes in his Bible, eventually producing the largest collection of Civil War art by any soldier who participated in the conflict. "
http://archive.archaeology.org/online/features/sneden/
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The usual bio information is mandatory and required, really- he wasn't exactly American. An immigrant from Nova Scotia, Private Sneden left our country with some of the most abidingly shocking, endearing, enduring, nostalgic and crushingly immediate images of the war- Brady et al notwithstanding. I'll stick by that. Before anyone tells me I'm merely ranting, please go to LoC, enlarge some images and sit with them. For awhile. You'll see.
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Gettysburg's Map- this teeny image of ' Mrs. Marshall's ' ( who Loyalty of Dogs thinks was across the street, and a daughter of Mrs. Leister ), and ' The Seminary '- deserve a frame.




" Robert Knox Sneden (1832–1918) was born in Nova Scotia and later moved to New York City, where, in the summer of 1861, he enlisted in the 40th New York Infantry Regiment. Sneden served with the Army of the Potomac in Virginia during the Peninsula Campaign and the Seven Days' Battles and in Washington, D.C., as a topographical engineer on the staff of Maj. Gen. Samuel P. Heintzelman. In November 1863 he was captured by Mosby's Rangers and spent the next thirteen months as a prisoner of war in various Confederate prisons including Andersonville in Georgia. After his exchange in December 1864, he was discharged and returned to New York City where he compiled a diary/memoir and a scrapbook of images documenting his service in the Civil War. He died at the Soldiers Home in Bath, N.Y., in 1918."
http://www.vahistorical.org/collect...ch/researcher-resources/finding-aids/sneden-0


But for years following his death in 1918, these tomes, " If- Mark- Twain -Wrote- With- The-War-With-A- Paint- Brush ", lay undiscovered. Mostly. Once in awhile one was traded in, an exchange for a relative's indebtedness. What a crazy thought! For more bio, and life's story, please do visit one of the sites? Or just a good ' Google ' search? Really would hate to lose anyone through boredom, slogging around his life. It was eventful, certainly. Just browsing LoC images fills you in- Andersonville, Georgia is represented hugely, for instance.

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"Sneden's watercolors came to light only recently. The artist's great nephew had used Sneden's scrapbooks, filled with vivid paintings of Civil War scenes, to repay bad debts in the early twentieth century. They were stored in a Connecticut bank vault for decades until 1994, when the current owner, a descendant of a friend of the great nephew, approached the Virginia Historical Society, which purchased the works. "But we didn't know anything about Sneden," says Nelson Lankford, the society's vice president. "There was no memoir or diary."


After contacting a military curator at West Point, Lankford and his colleagues learned that a small town on the Hudson River was once known as Sneden's Landing. A volunteer in her 90s at the local historical society remembered the Snedens, and was able to bring Lankford into contact with the descendant who had inherited the portion of Sneden's Civil War work that stayed in the family. "One of the first things he said to us was, 'you know about the memoirs don't you?'" says Lankford. "It turned out he had the memoir and other watercolors in mini storage in Arizona."
http://archive.archaeology.org/online/features/sneden/

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Glad he left us this of himself, a little misty, with a voice as clear as Christmas Eve night.

Anyway, smitten. Thank you, Private Sneden.



 

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