Year: 2024

In 1882 one-legged Sharpsburg veteran Willie Thomas Patterson was appointed Bursar of the University of North Carolina, and served in that post for most of the rest of his life, to 1909. He was raised the 5th of 7 children by wealthy parents James Newton (1806-1865) and Lucy Hawkins Couch Patterson (1808-1848) on their large…

Samuel Hodgman was First Lieutenant of Company I of the 7th Michigan Infantry at Antietam on 17 September 1862. He was wounded in both legs there and spent more than two months in hospitals recovering. He wrote his father Moses (1804-1881), back in Michigan, from the US Army General Hospital in West Philadelphia, PA on…

This stunning work is by William Sadler II (c. 1782—1839). His father, an English portrait painter and engraver, brought him to Ireland as a boy. William’s son Rupert (c. 1810-1892), also an artist, took his family to America from Ireland in about 1845 and worked in Boston. Rupert’s son Rupert J Sadler (Ireland 1842-Gettysburg 1863) –…

Private James Davis of the famed Irish Brigade was wounded at Antietam on 17 September 1862. His leg was amputated by his regimental surgeon the next day. This photograph is in the National Museum of Health and Medicine’s Otis Historical Archives (posted to their Flickr account). Thanks to John Banks for the pointer to it.

This excellent portrait, from a steel plate engraving, is of Connecticut-born physician Charles Squire Wood, who was Assistant Surgeon of the 66th New York Infantry and treated wounded soldiers on the field after Antietam in September 1862. This copy is from the Images from the History of Medicine (IHM) collection at the National Library of…

This evocative piece is from an etching by New York artist William Henry Shelton (1840-1932). He depicted horse artillery troops at Chancellorsville in May 1863, and had a run of 750 copies printed by Bryan, Taylor & Company in New York City in 1887. He deposited this copy with the Library of Congress in September…