The Gibbons Girls, Faces From Fredericksburg , 1864

JPK Huson 1863

Brev. Brig. Gen'l
Joined
Feb 14, 2012
Location
Central Pennsylvania
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Abby Hopper Gibbons, parasol, poses next to daughter Sarah both part of the Sanitary Commission's relief efforts, nursing at Fredericksburg, 1864. Rev. J.A. Stone may be in this photo, too ( I think I know who he is, another thread! ), the minister so famously reading funeral services in the burial series taken at Fredericksburg.

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LoC lists this as a shot of Sanitary Commission's cook tent- but there's much more.

There's a series of photos from Fredericksburg, post May, 1864 battles near there. We've come across them individually, men and women of the Sanitary Commission posed in a shattered barn yard. Incongruously inactive in the midst of chaos, strain is apparent on their faces. The older woman makes an appearance in yet another well known photo, sitting among wounded. One man may be a Reverend J.A. Stone, the minister officiating burials in yet another series.

Her name was Abby, Abigail, Hopper Gibbons, a Quaker turned abolitionist turned militant angel at war.
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Here she is again, cropped from another ' wounded at Fredericksburg ' tending wounded holding a canteen. These faces are incredible. Grgrgrandfather was wounded May, 1864 at Spotsylvania. He could be around there somewhere.

Her daughter Sarah sits to ( our ) left, her mourning attire the result of having lost husband William Emerson after 3 months of marriage. Tuberculosis, not war killed him leaving his widow to follow her mother to distant battlefields. Astonishingly over 60, b. 1811, Abby persisted in relief work throughout those awful years. By May, 1864 Sarah and Abby had spent 15 months at Point Lookout, called to Fredericksburg through urgent need.

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Abby Hopper Gibbons, front row middle, daughter Sarah Hopper Gibbons Emerson, left. This semi formal pose is out of place in Fredericksburg's shambles, the neat appearances of the sitters hugely deceiving. There's blood on all of them somewhere, and would be more. Sarah had been married November, 1863, in NYC to William Emerson. By May 1864 she was in mourning for him.

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Abigail and husband James somewhere in the 1850's, Sarah ( between parents ) and siblings Lucy, William and Julia

Barn behind them in top photo is filled with wounded. So is the house.

Mrs. J. Marshall, report from Fredericksburg
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It's not a thread on all relief work at Fredericksburg, it's bringing History closer. So many men and women stare at us from Time, somewhere in the war, who we think we'll never know. Their names and lives as an overlay tell more of the story than ' Group, Sanitary Commission, Fredericksburg '.

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