Soldier in photo finally identified

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Civil War portrait donated to the Library of Congress identified

By Michael E. Ruane, Published: August 21 The Washington Post


bYj72.jpg

Courtesy of Library of Congress - The newly identified Confederate soldier, Stephen Pollard, with pistol.



http://www.washingtonpost.com/local...7dcd36-eba9-11e1-b811-09036bcb182b_story.html
 
Superb!

I imagine there are many stories out there like this one -- information generally assumed to be unknown, that actually is known to someone, somewhere. The trick is finding them.
 
Uhm, this isnt really new information.......



Corporal Stephen Pollard
7th Confederate Cavalry, Co B
40th Georgia Infanty, Co G?
CSA
Stephen was born in Fayette, Carroll County, GA on August 19, 1829 and married Mary A. Vines on July 27, 1850. He enlisted in June 1862 in Carroll County with the 7th Confederate Cavalry, Company B, also known as "Claiborne's Regimental Partisan Rangers/7th Regimental Confederate Partisan Rangers). In March 1863, he transfered to Company L. Sometime between September and October of 1863, he was promoted to corporal.
He was a member of this cavalry unit until April 29, 1864 when he was given leave to go home for another horse after losing his the day before. In July, he also received a letter from his wife stating their house had burned down. On bounty rolls from April to October of 1864, he is marked as "not entitled to bounty" due to his absence. This may be in part due to him not being able to rejoin his regiment which was disbanded in July with remnants being integrated into the 10th Confederate Cavalry.
Family legend states
he was not able to rejoin his cavalry command and therefore enlisted in Company G, 40th Georgia Infantry and that he served with this unit until surrendering in April 1865 at Raleigh-Durham, NC. However, though no record has been found of this enlistment, he was with a unit somewhere because he was issued clothing in the 3rd quarter of 1864 by the Confederate army.
He died at the age of 70 in Temple, Haralson County, GA on October 24, 1899. His widow lived until 1904.
In the picture above, Stephen is shown with two Colt Navy .36 caliber pistols and a US Model 1855 Springfield muzzle-loading single shot pistol with detachable carbine shoulder stock. It used a Maynard tape priming system and fired .58 caliber minie balls - same as the Springfield rifle musket

Stephen Pollard was the 3XGreat-Grandfather of my reenactment unit's commander, and his picture and info has been on our ancestors page since 2006. I lived just down from the Pollards, on Pollard Road in Temple, Haralson Co,Ga, on land that used to belong to Stephen, and he was buried not far from there.
 
I'm gonna send this out to all who post images on this site. Here's hoping you post them in a format that allows us to enlarge them. It may be that this wasn't possible due to where it was copied from, but I'd sure like to get a better look at it. That gun looks awesome.
 
I'm gonna send this out to all who post images on this site. Here's hoping you post them in a format that allows us to enlarge them. It may be that this wasn't possible due to where it was copied from, but I'd sure like to get a better look at it. That gun looks awesome.

Terry, here's the website of the LOC which contains all the unidentifieds in their collection, about 57 pages, and they can be enlarged to quite a large size. The photo of Stephen Pollard posted above is from the NYT article, which could not be enlarged, I tried it. Anyway, if Pollard's photo is still in the unidentified's collection you will be able to enlarge it, but you might have a bit of a search on your hands. :smile:

http://www.loc.gov/pictures/search/?q=liljenquist&sp=1&sg=true&st=gallery

edit: there appear to be some identified soldiers in the collection. Did a search on Stephen Pollard but didn't come up with anything.
 
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