Applying the “Trinity” to ID Some Faces in a 557-Image Album in the National Archives

By Kurt Luther 

Civil War photo sleuthing is more than just giving a name to an unidentified soldier or sailor portrait. While a name is a critical clue in rediscovering the lost story behind a photo, often a name, per se, is not enough. Many Civil War-era men had similar, or identical, names. For example, the National Park Service’s Civil War Soldiers and Sailors (CWSS) Database shows over 3,500 individuals named William Johnson across both sides of the conflict. The American Civil War Research Database (HDS) lists over 40 soldiers named Murphy in just one regiment, the famed 69th New York Infantry, including Martin, Matthew, Maurice, Murtha, and several Michaels. There were even two different generals named William Smith—“Baldy” fought for the Union, “Extra Billy” for the Confederacy.

Disambiguation is often needed to identify an unknown soldier photo. This research process involves triangulation across multiple data points to rule out false positives. First, we seek to determine the soldier’s full name. Initials, commonly used during the Civil War era, must be expanded to first and (if possible) middle names. Next, military unit affiliations should be specified at the regiment or, preferably, the company level, as even a full name unattached to a service record leaves too many options on the table. Finally, life dates, or at least an approximate age, can help differentiate a father serving alongside his son with the same, or similar, name. This trinity of full name, military unit, and age allows us to generate an airtight identification.

The “trinity of full name, military unit, and age allows us to generate an airtight identification.”

I came to appreciate the importance of the trinity when researching an album of Civil War cartes de visite in the collections of the National Archives. The Joseph H. Taylor Album, according to the item description, was assembled by Joseph Hancock Taylor, a West Point graduate who served as a Union cavalryman and chief of staff to Maj. Gen. Edwin Sumner, rising from first lieutenant at the start of the Civil War to brevet colonel in both the regular and volunteer armies. Taylor died while on duty in Nebraska in 1885, aged 49, and his son John, also a future U.S. Army colonel, donated the album. I first encountered the album when writing about the iconic photo of the U.S. Colored Troops drummer boy in the Spring 2021 issue of MI. More recently, I realized the album is a treasure trove of rare portraits of Civil War soldiers, cadets, and civilians.

There are 557 photos in the album, which is fully digitized and accessible on the National Archives website. The staff have given titles to a majority of items, but I soon discovered that these titles appear to be based largely on the photos’ inscriptions, which could be incomplete, ambiguous, or incorrect. Some titles contained the soldier’s rank and surname. I recognized some of the  photos as famous individuals—“General Anderson” was Brig. Gen. Robert Anderson of Fort Sumter fame—while others, such as “Colonel Clark”—Henry Francis Clarke, Chief Commissary of Subsistence for the Army of the Potomac—were more obscure but relatively easy to track down. Some had full names, but were mislabeled due to transcription errors—“David Anthony” was, in fact, Daniel Anthony, a lieutenant in the 76th U.S. Colored Infantry.

Other photos were simply unidentified. Using the AI-based facial recognition features of Civil War Photo Sleuth (www.civilwarphotosleuth.com), I discovered that a standing view of a brigadier general was Dr. William Alexander Hammond, U.S. Surgeon General during much of the Civil War, and a vignette of an unidentified field-grade officer was James Lowry Donaldson, a well-regarded Union chief quartermaster who served in the Western Theater.

Still others were labeled with initials and a surname (“C. Barclay,” “L.M. Bronson”), or only a surname (“Adams,” “Barnes”), requiring more substantial research. In the remainder of this column, I detail two case studies of photos in the Taylor Album that already had partial identifications drawn from period inscriptions. I will demonstrate how to triangulate across multiple sources to disambiguate potential matches and reach an airtight conclusion about an identification. Along the way, we will discover two previously unknown wartime views of U.S. Army officers with distinguished careers, and identify the photographer linked to a mysterious Southern painted backdrop. These examples show that IDs are not always what they first appear to be, even in professionally managed archives, and photo sleuths have rich opportunities to contribute new discoveries.

Case Study No. 1: Jared Augustine Smith

This carte de visite was identified by the National Archives as “J.A. Smith,” a name confirmed by a period ink inscription with valediction on the carte’s reverse: “With Respects / of J. A. Smith.” The photo shows a young Union officer with long sideburns standing beside a fringed chair and a small table covered in drapery, one hand partially tucked in his frock coat, the other holding gloves. He wears the shoulder straps of a second lieutenant and, notably, a cap with the distinctive castle-and-wreath insignia of the engineer branch. The trimmed mount includes two thin border lines and a backmark of Charles D. Fredricks & Co., New York, above the inscription.

Neither the National Archives item description nor the photo’s inscription specified which J.A. Smith, among many with that rather common name who served in the Union Army, was pictured here. I was optimistic the engineer insignia would help narrow the field, but even among engineers there were at least a dozen such regiments to choose from. However, HDS does not allow for filtering name searches by branch (e.g., engineers), and its recently redesigned personnel search is limited to 500 results, far fewer than the total available for “J Smith.” I scanned these 500 without success. Next, I tried the National Park Service’s CWSS Database, which does allow users to filter by “Battle Unit Function,” i.e., branch. My search for Union Army engineers with the surname “Smith” yielded 367 results, but none had the initials J.A.

Feeling stuck, I tried a Google search for “J.A. Smith,” adding keywords for the Civil War and engineers. The most relevant result was a link to a 1974 report, “A History of the Philadelphia District, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, 1866-1971,” hosted by the federal government’s Defense Technical Information Center. The last couple pages of the 279-page PDF depicted a photo gallery of past commanders of the Philadelphia District, including “Col. J. A. Smith” for the years 1901-1902. Despite his graying hair and mustache, the colonel’s portrait bore an uncanny resemblance to the younger J.A. Smith in the National Archives carte.

It looked like I had my match. But who exactly was this Colonel J.A. Smith? The report didn’t include his full name, and surprisingly, my follow-up web searches failed to turn up more information about him. I even tried a reverse image search to try to match the photo with any similar ones on other websites, to no avail. Stuck again, I turned to Find a Grave, where I used the advanced search to narrow down the over 250 million memorial pages to a manageable number. Considering the colonel was still on active duty as late as 1902, I searched for any J. A. Smith who was a military veteran and lived between 1800 and 1930. I then sorted through the 137 matching records by last name, prioritizing those with ranks of colonel or higher. About halfway down the page, I came across the thumbnail portrait of a military cadet identified as Brig. Gen. Jared Augustine Smith. The clean-shaven young man in a dress uniform strongly resembled the Col. J.A. Smith portrait I had seen, as well as the younger Lt. J.A. Smith in the National Archives photo. Finally, we had a full name, life dates, and biography to fully identify him. To my knowledge, this is the first known Civil War-era portrait of Smith in uniform.

Biography

According to Cullum’s Register, Jared Augustine Smith, born 1840, was admitted to the United States Military Academy in 1858 and graduated with the Class of 1862 as a second lieutenant of engineers. With the Civil War already underway, he joined the staff of Maj. Gen. Nathaniel Banks as an assistant engineer, and by August 1862, was breveted a first lieutenant for his gallantry at the Battle of Cedar Mountain. After a brief sick leave and interlude at West Point teaching geography, history, and ethics, he returned to the field and participated in the construction of various defenses on the East Coast, earning permanent promotion to first lieutenant in 1863 and captain in 1864. He ended the war as a brevet major, and then held a series of positions in the Corps of Engineers overseeing the building and improvement of coastal fortifications, lighthouses, and harbors, from the Florida Keys to his native Maine. He retired as a brigadier general in 1903 and served as a consulting engineer and president of the Cuyahoga County (Ohio) Building Commission until his death in 1910.

Case Study No. 2: William Henry Hamner

The process of identifying this photo helped solve a mystery that has stumped me and other Civil War photo sleuths for years. The carte, identified by the National Archives as “W. H. Hamner,” shows a young Union officer with muttonchops standing before a painted backdrop. The single column of buttons on his frock coat and shoulder strap insignia indicates a first or second lieutenant. He wears gauntlets, dark trousers, a foot officer’s sword and scabbard, and a Hardee hat. Intriguingly, the hat insignia appears to be the letters “US” surrounded by a wreath, indicating a staff officer.

However, it was the photo’s painted backdrop that first caught my attention. Featuring a broken cannon wheel in the foreground and columns of marching soldiers and tents in the background, this backdrop was the focus of my Winter 2024 MI column. The photographer’s name and location were unknown, but based on several identified photos of 33rd U.S. Colored Infantry officers and a 54th Massachusetts Infantry enlisted soldier with the same backdrop, I had tentatively located it in South Carolina, possibly Beaufort. However, all of those images were either tintypes or albumens that lacked a photographer’s backmark. This was the first photo in carte format I’d encountered containing the broken cannon wheel, and I was eager to see what information might be gleaned on the reverse of its rather tattered mount. As Adam Fleischer wrote in his Autumn 2020 “Behind the Backdrop” column, there were several studios operating in Union-occupied Beaufort during the Civil War years.

To my delight, the carte’s back contained not only a period ink inscription, but also the photographer’s name and location: S.A. Cooley of Beaufort, S.C. Samuel Cooley, originally from Connecticut, became one of the most famous photographers in the South after he established a studio in Beaufort, and later traveled with the Union Army’s 10th Corps as an official military photographer. Now I knew the name behind the backdrop, and it confirmed my earlier hypothesis about the location. Even the faint lettering painted on the cannon wheel, which I had tentatively transcribed as “CULLYS,” now pointed towards Cooley’s studio.

The period inscription on the reverse read, “Very Respectfully / W. H. Hamner / 1st Lt. + Sig Off.” This inscription was clearly the source of the National Archives’ title for this photo, but the item description gave no details about who exactly Hamner was. An HDS search yielded three entries for “W. H. Hamner”: a private in the 40th Iowa Infantry, a quartermaster sergeant in the 1st U.S. Light Artillery, and an officer in the 3rd Rhode Island Heavy Artillery. The photo depicted an officer, so I inspected that entry more carefully, learning that Hamner was detached in 1862 to the Signal Corps, with prior service in the Regular Army. Follow-up research on the Signal Corps Association website (www.civilwarsignals.org) produced a brief biography of Hamner that connected him to the U.S. artillery unit and excluded the Iowa one. This is the only Civil War-era portrait of Hamner in uniform I have come across.

Biography

William Henry Hamner, a Virginia native, enlisted in the Army in 1856. In April 1861, he was the regimental quartermaster sergeant for the 1st U.S. Light Artillery, stationed at Fort Moultrie. Threatened by Confederate attack, Hamner and his garrison evacuated Moultrie and then, on April 14, Fort Sumter, with Hamner himself taking down the American flag during their departure. Hamner joined the 3rd Rhode Island Heavy Artillery as a second lieutenant later that year. By winter, he had been detached for training as an Acting Signal Officer, performing those duties for the next year. Returning to the 3rd Rhode Island, now attached to the District of Beaufort, 10th Corps, he was promoted to first lieutenant and captain in 1863, completing his Civil War service in command of Company A. According to a Los Angeles Times obituary on his Find a Grave page, Hamner was among the military party given the honor of restoring the American flag at Fort Sumter in April 1865. After the war, he remained in the U.S. Army, serving at a variety of Western posts and in the Spanish-American War. He retired as a lieutenant colonel in 1900, having spent 44 years in uniform, and died in San Francisco in 1925, the last veteran of the Battle of Fort Sumter.

Kurt Luther is an associate professor of computer science and, by courtesy, history at Virginia Tech and an adjunct professor at Virginia Military Institute. He is the creator of Civil War Photo Sleuth, a free website that combines face recognition technology and community to identify Civil War portraits. He is a MI Senior Editor.

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