Question about terminology

[BelleBlackburn]

I know that tintype was popular in the 1860s but how were they referred to by the general public? Did they call it a photograph or a tintype? "Let's have our tintype made?"

 

[Albert Sailhorst]

Some people referred to it as a "Likeness"......"I had a likeness made"....

 

[James B White]

Also, "picture taken," just like we'd say: "Everybody, writes a friend at the West, has his picture taken; and since the photograph is so cheap and universal, everybody will always continue to have it taken." Harper's, 1864

 

[lelliott19]

Not a tintype. but Sgt Eli Pinson Landers, Co H "Flint Hill Greys" 16th Georgia Volunteer Infantry seemed pretty proud of the "ambertype" he sent home as he wrote the following:

"I went up in town today and got my ambertype [sic] taken which I will send to you and I want you to keep this one for me and believe it to be the same boy that left you. This one cost 3 dollars but you wont take $100 for it when you get it. Mamma I want you to keep my picture as long as you live and show it to all the girls. Tell them that it is a Virginia Ranger. It is just like me now so you can guess how I look. It tells the girls and you all howda for me. It cant talk with you but if i was there I could tell you a heap! Look on the cartridge box and you will find my name which was put there with a lead pencil. So keep this picture My Dear Mother for it is just like I am now. Remember that it is a son of yours who is in the nobel cause of his country and who will willingly stay with it till death if needed!"
Weep Not for Me, Dear Mother (The Letters of Eli Pinson Landers), Elizabteh Roberson, Pelican Publishing, 1991, p 18.

Eli Pinson Landers - Born in Georgia in 1842. When he was 19 years old, he enlisted as a Sgt into the "Flint Hill Greys" Co H 16th GA Inf at Gwinnett County Georgia. He was twice wounded and survived many battles- Antietam, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, and Chickamauga, only to die of Typhoid fever in 1863 at Rome GA at the age of 21.