"Real" Richard Garnett photo found ?

kholland

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RichardBGarnett.jpg


I have read in various places over the past few years that the above photo long identified as General Richard Garnett, killed in the Confederate attack known as Pickett's Charge was not him but a relative. Below is the opening of an article (and link to the whole article) by Robert Krick for America's Civil War Magazine in March of last year. Very interesting reading. Did not see any posts about this which is kind of interesting in itself.

A picture is worth a thousand words, according to the familiar saying.

A carte de visite that turned up recently in the possession of a Maryland family just might be that of Brigadier General Richard Brooke Garnett, putting a face to the man whose death has, indeed, been the subject of thousands of words over the years. General Garnett died in the most conspicuous of ways, at the forefront of his Virginia brigade during the ill-fated Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg on July 3, 1863.

“Dick” Garnett, born in 1817 in Essex County, Va., commanded one third of Maj. Gen. George E. Pickett’s infantry force during that attack. He rode, however, rather than walked into the fight because a horse’s kick had shattered one of his ankles and left him hobbling. Despite being such an easy target, he survived across several acres of bullet-swept ground before falling near the apex of the charge—but his body disappeared in the carnage of battle, never to be found. The mystery surrounding his life and death deepens because no positively identified photograph of General Garnett is known to exist.

Many readers may own one or more books that include a photo that purports to be of Garnett, facing toward the viewer’s right, his dark hair combed back, sporting a heavy moustache and dark spade beard. That image also appears with the Richard Garnett entry on Wikipedia, the user-compiled Internet encyclopedia, as of this writing. That picture, however, is probably an image of Richard’s first cousin, Robert Selden Garnett. Robert was the first Confederate general killed during the war, in July 1861 at the Battle of Corrick’s Ford.

A 1908 letter from a member of the Garnett family emphatically declared that the alleged likeness of Richard “can and will be vouched for by any member of [the] family as an authentic likeness of Robt. S. Garnett, and not Richd. B. Garnett, of whom there is no picture in existence so far as known. R.B. Garnett was a man of just the opposite type, having light hair and blue eyes, and he wore no full beard.” The late Eleanor Brockenbrough of Richmond, a mainstay on the staff of the Museum of the Confederacy and an incomparable oracle on all things Virginian from the Civil War era, knew Garnett family members well and agreed with them that no image of Dick Garnett survived.

http://www.historynet.com/has-general-garnett-been-found.htm
 
Very interesting all this is. Leads me to think about the Gettysburg movie as they cast the actor who played garnett based on that known pic above as being Richard garnett. So the fact that the real Dick had lighter hair and no full beard certainly changes that whole thing
 
Very interesting all this is. Leads me to think about the Gettysburg movie as they cast the actor who played garnett based on that known pic above as being Richard garnett. So the fact that the real Dick had lighter hair and no full beard certainly changes that whole thing

In that case, we may as well get rid of the whole darned cast except for Jeff Daniels and Sam Elliott. Nope.
 
In that case, we may as well get rid of the whole darned cast except for Jeff Daniels and Sam Elliott. Nope.
The more I know about the Civil war in general, and Gettysburg in particular, the more I despise the casting in Ted Turner's movie. Martin Sheen as Lee? C'mon, there must have been about a foot's diff in height and about 20 years in age. Robert Duvall was more acceptable in "Gods and Generals".
 
I prefer sheen. Duvall was like somebody's grandmother playing Lee. Plus his being supposedly related to Lee gave him no objectivity. Sheen played him as a human being with flaws. The height problem didn't bother me as the difference between he and berenger is the same as the height difference between Lee and Longstreet
 
And it gets more complicated again ... all this because some weathered handwriting.


So we have Richard B. Garnett - or not. We also have Robert S. Garnett - or not.
Expired Image Removed

Then we have Franklin Gardner.
Expired Image Removed

And supposedly Gardner again ... while others think it might be R.B. Garnett instead.
220px-Franklin_Gardner_or_Richard_B_Garnett.jpg



So Gen. R.B. Garnett, Gen. R.S. Garnett and Gen. F. Gardner (more or less F.K. Gardner). And all this because errors in handwritten description or errors in the description transcription. The error repeats itself and a hundred years later it is written in stone.
 
No likeness of Garnett exists. Two photographs long supposed to be of Richard Garnett and his cousin, Gen. Robert S. Garnett are in fact different images of the latter. See Robert K. Kirk, "Armistead and Garnett," in Gary W Gallagher, ed., The Third Day at Gettysburg and Beyond (Chapel Hill 1994), pp 95-96, 124-25.
 
One would think that if he had made the CDV, he would have sent a couple home to the family since he was a bachelor and that the family would have remembered receiving it even if it was subsequently lost. Intriguing though.......

His sword turned up in a Baltimore antiques store:

About 150 miles north from where Garnett’s body presumably rests, and approximately 30 years later, another ex-Confederate general, George H. “Maryland” Steuart, came across Garnett’s sword in a second-hand shop in Baltimore. He purchased the relic, which was described as a sword with the initials “R.B. Garnett, U.S.A.” According to the Baltimore Sun, the sword was after the pattern of artillery officers in the United States Army.

Garnett, a graduate of the West Point Military Academy class of 1841, had served as an officer in the United States artillery until he resigned his commission in May 1861 and accepted a commission in the Confederate army. The sword he carried with him in the service of the United States went South with him.

Being a fellow graduate of West Point and United States cavalry officer, Steuart would have had a familiarity with the swords of the United States military. Before Steuart could locate the Garnett family to return the sword, though, he passed away in November 1903.
 
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