US Signal Officers on Elk Ridge (1862)
13 November 2022
Credited to Timothy O’Sullivan, but probably by Alexander Gardner, this photograph is titled Signal tower on Elk Mountain, Maryland, overlooking battlefield of Antietam, and was taken in late September or early October 1862, not long after the battle of Antietam. It is one of several taken of this place and these men.
Here’s a blow-up of the two officers seen in this view.
The man seated at the top is Lieutenant Aaron Brainard Jerome of the First New Jersey Infantry, detailed as a Signal Officer since March 1862. The other, with the telescope, is Lieutenant Edward Corbin Pierce of the 3rd Maine Infantry, a Signal Officer since December 1861. Not in this view was the third officer at this station, Lieutenant Frederick Wooster Owen, detailed from the 38th New York Infantry.
Standing on the ground at the left is Private Robert J. Morgan, on detail from the 3rd Maine, as is the flagman on top, Private Harrison Winslow “Harry” Gardner.
Although it was the site of a signal station the day of the battle, neither the log tower nor these officers were there on Elk Ridge on 17 September; the tower built afterward, Lieutenants Pierce, Jerome, and Owen assigned on September 20.
Here’s a lovely photograph of the group of signalmen on Elk Ridge, also by Gardner, titled Signal Corps Detachment, Elk Mountain, Md., October 1862.
… a group portrait that may have been taken on a different day [from those of the signal station]. Seated against the tree to the left is Private Morgan. Lieutenant Owen is posed seated with his left hand on his thigh in front of and to the left of the white signal flag; the man seated to the right of him, a telescope in his lap, is Lieutenant Jerome. Standing behind Jerome to the right is Private Gardner … And finally, the last seated officer on the right is Lieutenant Pierce. (The black men in this scene are servants.)
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Notes
My copy of the top photograph is from the Library of Congress, online, as is the group photograph below.
Details about these pictures from William A Frassanito in Antietam: The Photographic Legacy of America’s Bloodiest Day (1978).
G.H.T. Ferdinand Axt passport application (1870)
11 November 2022
Gottfried Heinrich Theodor Ferdinand Axt was an acting Hospital Steward with his regiment, the 20th New York Infantry, on the Maryland Campaign of 1862. Like many in the regiment, he was born in Germany, but had excellent English as well.
He was later commissioned an Assistant Surgeon, first of Volunteers and then in the Regular US Army. This suggests prior medical training, perhaps in Germany, though I’ve not yet found evidence of it.
In January 1870, a month before he resigned his US Army commission, he applied for a passport in Washington, DC indicating he was planning travel overseas. This lovely document helped me nail down his full name along with place and date of birth, and includes details of his physical appearance. I found it online via Ancestry.com.
The Kennedy Long Family (c. 1805)
10 November 2022
“The woman at the left of our picture, the mother,” Mrs Adams explained when she showed me the picture, “is my great and Minna Mar’s great-great-grandmother. Her grave is at Pittsfield. She came to Illinois in 1830. Her name was Elizabeth Kennedy [1779-1850] and she married Kennedy Long [1763-1821] of Baltimore, a colonel in the War of 1812. The baby standing on the sofa next to his mother, the little fellow in the dress, is my great-granduncle George Long [1798-1815]. Next to him sits my great-grandaunt Elizabeth [1802-1870]. She’s the one extending her hand with proud, patronizing largess toward her brother, the little chap in the dark jacket helping himself to the cherries in the basket. His name was Andrew Kennedy Long [1804-1866] and he grew up to be a member of the antarctic exploring expedition led by Captain Charles Wilkes – the Wilkes who later almost caused a war between England and America when he insulted the British flag by snatching Mason and Slidell from the deck of an English packet.”
“Andrew Kennedy [Long] served also as a captain in the Mexican War,” Minna Mar reminder her mother. “And his son acted as secretary for Andrew Johnson.”
To bring this back to the Maryland Campaign of 1862, that son was Andrew Kennedy Long, Jr.
He enlisted in the 3-month 9th Pennsylvania Infantry in early 1861 at age 18, then in the 7th Pennsylvania Reserves, and was in action with them at Antietam. He was appointed First Lieutenant in the 12th Tennessee Cavalry (US) in February 1864 and in 1865 commissioned Major and Assistant Adjutant General – a staff officer – in the US Volunteers. It was probably in that role that he was military secretary to President Johnson. He was an officer in the Regular Army after the war and was a Captain and Commissary of Subsistence at his death by suicide in 1878 at age 34.
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Notes
The quotes above are from the painting’s owners in 1941, Minna Adams and her daughter Minna Margaret Adams of Jacksonville, IL, as published in Jay Monaghan’s Old Masterpieces Discovered in the Corn Belt in the Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, Volume 34, Number 3 (September 1941).
I think Mrs Adams had the children George and Andrew confused. From their birth dates according to family genealogists, Andrew was the younger boy, with sister Eliza between them. In 1805, Andrew would have been a baby in a confirmation gown and George about 7 years old.
The painting is by the “earliest documented professional Afro-American painter”, Joshua Johnson/Johnston (c. 1765-1830) [National Gallery of Art bio sketch]
This copy of the painting was shared online to the FamilySearch database by Peggy T Robinson in 2014 (free membership required).
This work and others of Johnson were part of a 1976 exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York [catalog pdf].
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