- Joined
- Feb 13, 2011
- Location
- Howard County, Maryland
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