McLEAN COUNTY HISTORY & GENEALOGY NEWS
By Euleen Rickard
Last year as my family and I sat on the bleachers in Sacramento waiting for the reenactment of the Civil War Battle of Sacramento I was attracted to the many spectators snapping pictures. Several kinds of cameras were being used, from the “throw-away” to the “digital video.” A lady seated in front of me had a new digital video camera that she never had used and was reading the directions when she saw another person with a camera like hers. Taking her camera and her directions she approached the man and after much discussion and instruction on the operation of the camera she returned to her seat saying, “I think I’ve got the hang of it” and proceeded to film the happenings. She focused on the speeches of Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis, Molly’s ride, her brother’s ride on his beautiful horse and continued, capturing the Battle from beginning to end.
I began to think of the many pictures that we have of the Civil War and wondered how they were obtained. In a search of the Internet for information I found an article titled “Photographic Cameras in the American Civil War.” The article gave a brief history of the camera stating “Today’s cameras all derive from the 16th century” and “in1835 a Frenchman named Daguerre and Englishman named Talbot patented the first of the modern photography invention.” So when the war began they already had portable box cameras with chemical flashes.
The best known photographer of the war was Matthew Brady (1823-1896). Though he did not take most of photos himself, he engaged many camera operators and is still regarded as the one who chronicled much of the war. He had studied under Samuel Morse, painter, and scientist/inventor at the National Academy of Design where he learned the daguerreotype process and opened a studio on Broadway in New York City. At the outbreak of the war he left his studio to document the war. He took a few photographs, then hired at least twenty photographers to do the work and all marked their work “Photo by Brady.” The expensive processes of photography and his stay in the camps of the war left him nearly bankrupt at the war’s end. The United States government paid him $25,000 for full title to his Civil War images. In 1896 he died alone and almost forgotten. He is buried in Arlington National Cemetery, honored among many of the soldiers that he photographed.
The museum has a list of twenty-two photographers that served in the Civil War. One of these, Alexander Gardner had a gallery in Washington DC. During the war he was the official photographer of the Army of the Potomac. He took photographs of Lincoln and documented Lincoln’s funeral. He closed his gallery and went West to photograph the route of the Union Pacific Railroad where he produced renowned scenes of the westward expansion as stereograph views. The museum information on the Civil War, include the book, “The Pictorial History of the Confederacy” and other books that picture the war with some of the pictures painted and sketched by artists.
The museum’s first exhibit, “McLean County’s Military of all Wars” will be open to the public on Friday, May 16th and Saturday May17th, hours 11AM to 4PM and on Sunday, May 18th, 1PM to 4PM. On Friday May 16th pork burgers, potato chips, cold drinks and homemade cookies will be sold from 11AM to?. Come for lunch and stay to see the first exhibit.