Saturday, November 20, 2010

Scanned In Some Pictures of My Great-Great-Great-Grandfather

I needed these for my class, since we are covering the Civil War after the Thanksgiving break.

This is Samuel McIlvaine taken in about 1861, likely before he joined the Indiana 10th Volunteer Infantry.  He was a wealthy farmer--quite wealthy, according to the 1860 census--but he also taught school.  If you read his diary, you will not be at all surprised.

Here he is in uniform, in a daguerrotype taken in 1862, near the time of the Battle of Shiloh, which he missed because he was desperately sick with what sounds like dysentery, compounded with 19th century medical "care."  (Wouldn't you give someone mercury compounds if they were suffering from dysentery?)



There is something very disturbing about all these pictures of the period, especially the sternness and the looks of the eyes--perhaps because of the length of exposure required.

Here's a picture that my niece took a few years ago of his headstone in Chattanooga National Military Cemetery.

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