Category: my favorites

I’ve consulted this fine map on more than one occasion during my recent research into signal officers and surgeons at Antietam. It is annotated with the locations of US Army field hospitals and signal stations on and near the battlefield, and is a compilation of two earlier maps which supported the after-action reports of Army…

Here are two excellent CDVs of Federal Surgeon Bernard Albert Vanderkieft from Mike Fitzpatrick’s collection. From 16 September 1862 to 13 May 1863 Dr Vanderklieft was in charge of the largest Antietam field hospital, known as the Antietam or Smoketown Hospital, and he and the other surgeons there treated hundreds of patients during and after…

New-to-me is this hand-made newspaper published in April 1865 by Confederate prisoners at Fort Delaware. Apparently it was the only edition and perhaps 3 or 4 copies survive. This one is online from New York Heritage, a project of the New York Historical Society. I came upon this while looking into Lieutenant Benjamin Franklin “Frank”…

An announcement in the Sacramento Daily Union of 3 January 1893. And here’s a reproduction wanted poster seen recently in the American Hotel in Cerro Gordo, California. This 2017 photo of the poster is from Dave’n’Kathy on their Vagabond Blog. Sadly, a fire destroyed the hotel, Billy Crapo’s cabin next door, and presumably that poster…

If you are a student of US Naval Aviation, this 1911 photograph may be something like the holy grail. Pictured is the Curtiss A-1 aircraft with Glenn H Curtiss at the wheel. Seated (L-R) are his students – young US Navy officers John Rodgers, John Henry Towers, and Theodore Ellyson – who qualified that summer…

This imposing item is a plaster bust of Leopold Blumenberg, brevet Brigadier General of Volunteers and late Major, 5th Maryland Infantry. Painted to look like marble, it’s in the collection of the Jewish Museum of Baltimore. Blumenberg commanded the 5th Maryland at Antietam and was seriously wounded near the Sunken Road/Bloody lane there on 17…