behind AotW

Captain Eugene A. Hawkins, Colonel William H. Willis, and Captain Howard Tinsley of 4th Georgia Infantry Regiment in uniform: a photograph in the Liljenquist Family Collection of Civil War Photographs at the Library of Congress.

Hawkins was First Lieutenant of Company H in Maryland in 1862. Willis was then Captain of Company I and commanded the regiment at Sharpsburg after Major Smith was killed there on 17 September.

Howard Tinsley joined the regiment in December 1862 as regimental Quartermaster and was probably not in Maryland in September 1862, but his younger brother William Davies Tinsley (1836-1879), a Private in Company I, was wounded at Sharpsburg and afterward disabled for field service.

Portrait paintings of Richard Henry Rush (1825 – 1893) and his wife Susan Bowdoin Yerby (1829-1889) done about 2 years after their marriage in Baltimore.

The Rush family had been prominent in Philadelphia since before the Revolution.

Richard was Colonel of his Lancers – the 6th Pennsylvania Cavalry – from 1861 to 1864, and he led a 2 regiment brigade, his 6th and the 4th Pennsylvania Cavalry, on the Maryland Campaign of 1862.

Paintings by Thomas Sully (1783-1872).

A showing of Sully portraits, including Susan’s, was held at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia in 1922. Complete contents are found in the Catalogue (online from the Internet Archive).

James Gardner took this photograph at Brandy Station, VA in December 1863. The men in it are identified (left to right) as:

Captain Samuel A McClellan(d) – Battery G, First New York Light, 1861-65, formerly 2nd Lieutenant of Busteed’s Chicago Battery. He was with the 2nd Corps in Washington DC in September 1862 and not on the Maryland Campaign.

Captain J (Jacob) Henry Sleeper – 1st Lieutenant First (“A”) Battery, Massachusetts Light Artillery, 1861-62; Captain 10th Battery 20 Sept 1862-1865. He may have been in Maryland with Battery A, part of the 6th Army Corps; they were in reserve at Antietam.

Captain O’Neil W Robinson, Jr. – commanded the 4th Battery, Maine Light Artillery on the Maryland Campaign. Major and Artillery Chief, 2nd Army Corps in 1864. He died 4 months after this photograph was made, at home of disease, exactly 40 years old.

Alfred Waud – famed combat artist and newsman. Was present on the field and sketched extensively at Antietam.

This digital image is from Gardner’s original wet collodion glass plate negative, now in the collection of the Library of Congress.