Mar 10, 2020 - Sale 2533

Sale 2533 - Lot 100

Price Realized: $ 375
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 500 - $ 750
(CIVIL WAR--PHOTOGRAPHY.) Group of cartes-de-visite of soldiers connected to Ohio, the Invalid Corps, and the Chicago Conspiracy. 11 items in box, minor wear. Cincinnati and Dayton, OH, circa 1865

Additional Details

These photographs came from an album kept by Demetrius Minor Steward (1841-1922) of Dayton, OH, a sergeant of the 11th Ohio Infantry. After being badly wounded, he was sent to Cincinnati in early 1865 to command a garrison battalion. The photographs seem to date from this period; almost all have backmarks from Cincinnati or Dayton, OH photographers. One of the photographs is signed by Steward, and another by his brother Thomas Link Steward (1833-1910) of the same regiment.
Among the more interesting images is one signed "R.T. Semmes, Cumberland, Md." on mount recto and on verso "Chicago Conspiracy. To D.H. Stewart with the compliments of R.T. Semmes." Richard Thompson Semmes (1842-1924) was a nephew of Confederate admiral Raphael Semmes, and working in Chicago as a lawyer, where he took part in a shadowy 1864 plot to free Confederate prisoners from nearby Camp Douglas, dubbed the Chicago Conspiracy. Semmes was sentenced to 3 years of hard labor. Another photograph is signed "Sincerely yrs, Vincent Marmaduke." Vincent Marmaduke (1831-1904) was, probably not coincidentally, also a Chicago Copperhead implicated in the Chicago Conspiracy.
Other identified photographs include William Mahon of the 36th Iowa, Rolla May of the 54th Ohio, and Francis A. Stone of the Cincinnati 1st Infantry Detachment. These photographs are accompanied by their worn original album, and a thick stack of research notes compiled by the original owner.