Letter of the Day: July 2 - Civil War photography

Washington, D.C. July 2, 1885

Mr. Trout

Please deliver to bearer sixty of the Wilderness negatives. He will designate the sixty wanted.

Yours truly,
Albert Ordway


Approved.
J.S. Billings
Surg USA
To be returned within a week

Trought has list of number sent to Ordway

This is of interest to me because we no longer have these photographs, but they were done by two cameramen of note. In 1865, Museum photographer William Bell and Dr. Reed Bontecou, a proponent of medical photography, roamed Virginia battlefields taking photographs including stereographs of the Wilderness battlefield. One hundred and twenty-one negatives of the Wilderness were taken, although 21 were missing by 1874; they had not been printed since Bell's departure from the Museum in 1868. (Otis to Keen, March 8, 1879; Otis to Bontecou, October 8, 1866; Parker to Otis, February 9, 1874, none are still in the Museum)