behind AotW

Just a quick post this week – I’ve too many irons in the fire. Blog neglect aside, though, January has been a good month for incoming treasures and catching up with biographies on AotW.

Corporal James A Barber (M. Frazel)

One in particular came out of a post I found on Granite in my Blood just before Christmas in which Midge Frazel transcribed a relative’s narrative about the Barber Family. Included was her great-grandfather James Albert Barber, who was in Battery G, First Rhode Island Light Artillery…

My favorite blog about the 18th Massachusetts Infantry is reanimated. Donald’s posting again on behalf of his team on Touch the Elbow. Give them a hearty Hurrah!, and Welcome Back, won’t you? Elbow to elbow now, lads.

While chasing one of my boys, Lieutenant Colonel Samuel W. Owen, 3rd Pennsylvania Cavalry, I came on a photograph of him in an unusual setting. It made me think about how few casual or frivolous pictures–snapshots–I’ve can remember seeing among (probably) thousands of American Civil War-era images.

On reflection, this isn’t surprising. Due to the technical demands of wet-plate photography during the War, I’d expect most photographs to have a serious purpose. The long exposures and difficulty in preparing and developing photographs in the field probably made it less likely that photographers would risk wasting film on a moving subject or mundane scene.

Perhaps as a result, most surviving photographs are stiffly posed, and live subjects seem terribly aware of the camera. For fun, today, I’ve found a few with quite a different feel …