55 Rare Photos Are In Mass. Exhibit
(April 2009 Civil War News)

MEDFORD, Mass. — Fifty-five rare Civil War photographs are on display at the Medford Historical Society through April 30. “Of the People: Faces of the Civil War” includes portraits of men, women, children, freed slaves, immigrants and Native Americans.

The portraits are from a collection of 3,200 prints by such photographers as Mathew Brady and Andrew Russell that were collected by Gen. Samuel Crocker Lawrence, commander of the Lawrence Light Guard.

He was wounded at Manassas and put down Boston draft riots as a brigadier general in the state militia. He later was the first mayor of Medford.

The Lawrence family gave the photographs to the Medford Historical Society in 1948. They remained there forgotten until a visiting student saw them in 1990 and told his father, a Civil War buff.

Archivists and curators later determined it was one of the largest and finest such collections in the country.

The images are striking for their clarity and detail, in part because of platinum-based development methods that allow them to be enlarged to more than double their size. They are also crisper than other versions of the same images because they are early generation, not copies of copies.

The exhibit images includes sailors on the deck of the USS Miami, a black woman standing outside a slave pen, a white woman and children doing Pennsylvania troops’ laundry and three Union officers at a tea table tended by a black servant. Chesson said they were bodyguards for Gen. George McClellan at Antietam.

The exhibit was designed for portability. Organizations interested in showing the photographs can contact the historical society.

The Blue and Gray Education Society (BGES) of Virginia assisted with the exhibit. Director Len Riedel said the society arranged for member UMass-Boston history professor Michael Chesson to write the exhibit catalog.

Chesson told the Boston Globe he was flabbergasted when he saw the range and depth of the photos.

BGES also provided funds for a scanner and other equipment to digitize the collection.

Additional funding is needed for preservation of the collection. The society hopes to raise $30,000 by the end of the year.

On April 22 at 7 p.m. the Medford Public Library will host a related lecture by Anita Silvey, “I'll Pass for Your Comrade: Women Soldiers in the Civil War.”

Exhibit coordinator Jim Kiely invites groups that cannot visit during the society’s weekend hours to call and make special arrangements.

The historical society is open Saturdays from 12 to 3 and Sundays from 12 to 4. Admission is free. For information call (617) 233-1982 or (781) 395-7950 or go to www.medfordhistorical.org