Looking a Maryland Confederate in the Face: D. W. Culpepper Tintype of Charles Harvey Stanley

If the image on this tintype is, as I think possible, Charles Harvey Stanley (1842-1913), then the operator at D. W. Culpepper’s gallery captured the 24-year-old not long after he mustered out of the Confederate army, ca. 1866.

Ross Kelbaugh’s Directory of Maryland Photographers 1839-1900 lists D. W. Culpepper as occupying 127 W. Baltimore Street from 1866-1868. Culpepper has included “Successor to Leach’s” on the back, which helps confirm the date; William Leach occupied that address ca. 1863-1865. He may have bought back the gallery from Culpepper, because Leach again occupied 127 W. Baltimore Street 1868-1870.

If you look at the two other photographs of Charles H. Stanley that are accessible on the web, his distinctive hairline is the same, but on the opposite side. The technology of tintype photography explains this: Tintypes turned a negative image into a positive, so the image is reversed left to right.

One can trace a few faint lines of penciled signature behind the ink. The ink signature is not identical to the one he provided for his portrait and biographical sketch in volume one of 1907’s Men of Mark of Maryland, but there are similarities. If this portrait was a gift to his younger sister Eliza Stanley (1850-1928) she may have inked over the original pencil inscription.

Born in Saybrook, Connecticut but raised in St. Mary’s County and Laurel, Prince George’s County, Maryland, Charles was the son of an outspoken southern sympathizer, Rev. Harvey Stanley (1809-1885). Stanley was rector of Laurel’s Holy Trinity Episcopal Church from 1851 until his death.

During the run-up to the Civil War, Prince George’s County had the highest population of enslaved African-Americans in the state, and much of the white population identified with the Confederacy.

So, clearly, did Charles Stanley. In 1862, he traveled to Virginia to enlist  in the Confederate forces. He joined Company B of the First Maryland Cavalry Regiment and served until the southern forces surrendered in 1865.

By all accounts, Charles Stanley integrated easily and successfully into post-war Prince George’s County life. He studied law,  developed a prosperous practice, and became involved in many of the civic institutions of the county and the state. He was deeply interested in education, and was president of the Prince George’s County Board of School Commissioners as well as a trustee of the Maryland Agricultural College.

During his long career he was also elected to the Maryland House of Delegates, served as mayor of Laurel and as Comptroller for the State of Maryland under Governor Austin L. Crothers.

Both of Charles Stanley’s wives came from southern planter families with deep Maryland roots. Ella Lee Hodges (1844-1881) descended through her mother from some of the founders of Anne Arundel County.   His second wife, Margaret Snowden (1858-1916), was descended from one of the earliest settlers and largest landowners in Maryland, Richard Snowden.

Raised in Maryland’s plantation/slave economy, Charles fought for that way of life and married into it. He and his second wife, Margaret (Snowden) Stanley are buried at Ivy Hill Cemetery, Laurel, Md., in the heart of a region that today, ironically, boasts  the  most highly educated and “wealthiest African American-majority county in the United States.“

Buffham’s Brice House, Annapolis

This over-sized (8-1/2″x6-1/2″) card photograph by George Richard Buffham (1846-1915) is much larger than today’s tourist mementos, but the photo of the Brice House on East Street, entitled “Colonial Annapolis,”  seems meant for a tourist market.

English-born George Buffham moved to Annapolis from Baltimore and operated a photographic studio at 48 Maryland Avenue there from the 1890s to about 1910. He held an appointment as official photographer to the US Naval Academy between 1890 and 1900; in 1912 he sold his studio and retired with his wife, Ethel, to their home outside the town.

Buffham photographed several well-known graduates of the Naval Academy, including Chester W. Nimitz. Some of Buffham’s portraits can be found in the Maryland State Archives and the Library of Congress.

Buffham also operated a photographic studio at the Bay Ridge Resort, a popular summer hotel and amusement park now an exclusive enclave of homes just south of town that is fiercely protective of its heritage, wildlife, open space and community traditions.

George and Ethel (Hubbard) Buffham’s red-roofed home, built in 1891, still stands at 11 Barry Avenue in Bay Ridge. Unfortunately, a 1915 fire that destroyed Bay Ridge’s hotel also destroyed Buffham’s large collection of photographic plates.

This is the first example of one of Buffham’s tourist-market photographs that I’ve seen come up for sale. It depicts one of the oldest and best-known Georgian homes in Annapolis, the James Brice House on East Street. Begun by Annapolis Mayor James Brice, the Brice House was built of brick on a fieldstone foundation 1767-1774, in a five-part form featuring a central structure flanked by two “hyphens.”

The Library of Congress has digitized 15 of its collection of 17 photographs of Brice House’s interior and exterior. The house is now home to the International Masonry Institute’s headquarters, and apparently is not open to the public.

The house has figured in recent archeological work in the town.  1998 excavations in the east wing uncovered African-American protective Hoodoo caches.

Photographs like this one open a window into the ways that 19th century photographers attempted to expand their products beyond portraiture by capitalizing on Americans’ revived interest in their nation’s origins.

Additional Sources:

Jane Wilson McWilliams and Caroline Patterson, Bay Ridge on the Chesapeake: An Illustrated History (Annapolis: Brighton Editions, 1986) Available for purchase from the authors.

Portrait of Cadet Lee DuVall, 1892

The period-ink notes on the back of this cabinet card photograph identify the subject as  “Lee Duvall, April 22, 1892, Laurel.”

My research turned up two individuals named Robert Lee DuVall in Prince George’s and Anne Arundel counties, both descendants of the same Anne Arundel County family founded by immigrant Huguenot Mareen Duvall.

Mareen DuVal  or DuVall (b. 1625) arrived in Anne Arundel County in 1650. When he died in 1694, he left a vast estate of land and slaves, and 12 children by three wives. The Society of Mareen Duvall Descendants erected several historical markers in the area, including one near Davidsonville at  the site of Middle Plantation, where he died.

From Mareen Duvall’s 12 children sprung a huge clan whose members intermarried with many important Maryland and Virginia families.

Robert E. Lee DuVall was born about 1869 to wealthy plantation-owner and Confederate officer Ferdinand DuVall and Annie Linthicum Duvall. They lost their estate, centered in what is now Crofton, Anne Arundel County, after Ferdinand DuVall’s death in 1878; Robert, his mother and sister emigrated to Oregon, but he returned briefly, in 1900, to reclaim the family cemetery. Robert, a railroad employee,  died in Shoshone County, Idaho in 1943.

But the youth in this photograph seems a bit too young to have been born in 1869. A second Robert Lee Duvall, born 1875, seems a much better match.This Lee Duvall was the son of merchant Evans Duvall (1839-1911). In 1900 the family lived in Laurel, Prince George’s County.

Lee’s uniform is almost identical to that worn by the cadets of Maryland Agricultural College, precursor to the University of Maryland, College Park, just 13 miles away from Laurel. The college’s 1911 historical pamphlet lists all the graduates of the school from its opening to date.  Lee is not listed, but he may either have taken the preparatory course, or attended without graduating.

He is buried in  St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church Cemetery, Crownsville, Maryland, along with is wife, Mary (Moss) Duvall, and children Mary Duvall Waterman, Hilda Adaline Duvall, and Charles Evans Duvall.

The Russell studio was operated by William C. Russell (1843-1900), and by his wife, Mrs. Dora C. (Jose) Russell ca. 1886-1904.  The photographer chose a simple, soft, neutral background, lit from above left, to allow the ornamental pattern of the trim on the youth’s uniform, bright with brass buttons, to shine.

For more about Ferdinand Duvall’s career in the Confederate Army, visit his page on this site devoted to the history of the Second Maryland Infantry, CSA. For more about Mareen Duvall and his descendants, see The Founders of Anne Arundel and Howard Counties by J. D. Warfield, published 1905; and yes, Mareen “the Emigrant,” as he is called, has a page on Wikipedia.

Portrait of Allen Lusby

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This cabinet card portrait, identified as Allen Lusby, was found in an album belonging to Elizabeth J. Gaither Summers of Baltimore.

It’s not clear how Allen Lusby was related to the Gaither and Summers families. The name Lusby was definitely part of the family tree. In 1818, a Henrietta Lusby (1800-1873) married Elizabeth Gaither Summers’ grandfather, John Marriott Gaither (1790-1850) in Anne Arundel County.

But Henrietta Lusby’s parentage is unknown, and I haven’t established a link between Henrietta and Alllen.

An Allen J. Lusby, born April 1879 in Maryland, could be our man. This Allen Lusby’s father, Robert Lusby, and uncle, Charles P. Lusby were, coincidentally, photographers.  In 1880, Charles and Robert and their families lived together at 91 West Baltimore Street, presumably operating a studio together. Among their neighbors were photographers Ferdinand Wagner (63 West Baltimore Street) and David J. Wilkes (125 West Baltimore Street).

Allen J. Lusby worked as a printer, mostly in Philadelphia, where he could possibly have become acquainted with Elizabeth Gaither Summers’ cousin Albert Gaither, son of Anne Arundel County farmer Evan Lusby Gaither (b. abt. 1830, Maryland).

The portrait, a vignetted bust, is lit from the side to bring out the strong line of Lusby’s nose. Behind the walrus mustache–popular in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries–Lusby’s face appears smooth, round and soft. He might have been quite a young man at the time of the photo.

F. M. Zuller is listed in Kelbaugh’s Directory of Maryland Photographers as having operated a studio in Annapolis 1891-1892.

A note in The St. Louis and Canadian Photographer for June 1900 reports that F. M. Zuller, “formerly photographer in the Naval Academy of Annapolis,” died at his farm in Chesterfield, outside Annapolis, on April 15th of that year. His body was taken to his place of birth, Richfield Springs, New York, for burial.

All photographs from the Elizabeth J. Gaither Summers album were acquired on ebay from jbatro, johnscollectibles@att.net.

Cora B. and Albert R. Gaither

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Portraits of this Philadelphia married couple were found in an album belonging to Mrs. Elizabeth J. Gaither Summers of Baltimore.

Albert R. Gatiher (b. September 1873, Anne Arundel Co., Md.), was Mrs. Summers’ nephew: The son of her uncle Evan Lusby Gaither and Anna Maria Robinson Gaither.

Written on the back of Albert’s photo are the words “For Uncle Benny.” Uncle Benny may have been his father’s bachelor brother Benjamin Gaither (b. 1837, Anne Arundel County, Md.), who lived in a modest two-story, two-bay row house on Fayette Street in Baltimore.

Albert married his Virginia-born wife Cora about 1895 in Pennsylvania. She wears the popular leg o’mutton sleeve style of the mid-1890s, but I’m not knowledgeable enough to pinpoint the date of her dress with any accuracy. The white blind-embossed surface of the mount suggests a mid- to late-1890s date as well.

Cora and Albert, a carpenter at a trolley-car works, had one child, Howard Raymond Gaither (b. 1895, Pa.). Howard worked for the Boston-based John Hancock Life Insurance Company in Upper Darby, Chester County, Philadelphia, Pa.). Howard’s home on Green Valley Road, near the McCall Golf and Country Club, remains an area of pleasant, well-kept semi-detached ca. 1939 homes.

All photographs from the Elizabeth J. Gaither Summers album were acquired on ebay from jbatro (johnscollectibles@att.net).

From Walzl’s Imperial Portrait Studio: William Henry Gaither

This cabinet card photograph of a young William Henry Gaither (1881-1920) is another from an album owned by Baltimorean Mrs. Elizabeth Gaither Summers.

Identified as “Will Gaither,” this image was probably taken at one of Richard Walzl’s studios about 1889–the only year Walzl used this combination of addresses on his photographs. The use of rustic props and backgrounds marks the height of 1880s style for studio portraits. Beveled, gilt-edged mounts were just beginning to be introduced.  Will is dressed in a tweed Norfolk suit, a popular style for boys from the 1860s on.

Will Gaither was likely Elizabeth Gaither’s nephew, the son of her brother John W. Gaither. John, a steamboat pilot and lighthouse-keeper, married Miss Marie Horner about 1880, and Will was their first-born of three.

William worked as a stevedore on the docks, but suffered from epileptic seizures. Perhaps epilepsy caused his death at the age of 39.

All photographs from the Elizabeth J. Gaither Summers album were acquired on ebay from jbatro (johnscollectibles@att.net).

Miss Mary H. Gaither

This cabinet card photograph of Mary H. Gaither (b. abt. 1856, Anne Arundel Co., Md.) was taken by Baltimore photographer Barnett McFee Clinedinst, Sr. The photo was found in an album owned by Elizabeth J. Gaither Summers, and may depict Mrs. Summers’ sister Mary.

Their parents were carpenter Vachel H. Gaither (b. 1824, Anne Arundel Co., Md.), descendant of a line of Gaithers going back to before the American Revolution, and Margaret E. Robinson (b. abt. 1830, Anne Arundel Co., Md.).

Dating this photograph is difficult. Mary Gaither looks to be no more than in her mid-20s, at most. Clinedinst opened a studio in Balitmore in 1880 and operated at various locations until the mid-1890s, when he moved to Washington, DC. However, none of the studio locations documented in newspaper ads or in city directories was 48 and 50 N. Charles Street. James Cummins operated at 48 N. Charles for a number of years. Cummins occupied both  48 and 50 N. Charles in 1884, about the right time for this photo.

The unraveling of this riddle will have to wait for additional evidence.

All photographs from the Elizabeth J. Gaither Summers album were acquired on ebay from jbatro (johnscollectibles@att.net).

Margaret “Rita” Robinson Gaither?

This cabinet card photograph is another  image from an album owned by Baltimorean Elizabeth J. Gaither Summers that was recently broken up and  sold piecemeal.

The photo was identified as Rita Gaither.

Rita was a common diminuitve for Margaret and Marguerite. Based on my research into the Gaither and Summers families (available to registered users on ancestry.com) I believe this is Elizabeth’s mother, Margaret E. Robinson Gaither, born about 1830 in Anne Arundel County to William Robinson and Mary Ann Eleanor Turton Robinson.

It may be a case of two sisters marrying two brothers. Margaret married Anne Arundel County carpenter Vachel H. Gaither, and Margaret’s sister Anna Maria Robinson married Vachel’s brother, farmer Evan Gaither. While Evan and Ann remained in Anne Arundel County, Vachel migrated to Baltimore, probably to take advantage of the post-bellum building boom there.

The Gaither name goes back to the early days of Anne Arundel County. Evan and Vachel were sons of John Marriott Gaither (1790-1850) and Henreitta Lusby Gaither (1800-1873). Evan and Vachel’s grandfather, Vachel Gaither (1750-1804) served as a captain in the Severn Battalion of the Maryland Militia during the American Revolution.

David J. Wilkes kept a photography studio at 125 W.  Baltimore Street in Baltimore from about 1873 to 1885 (Kelbaugh, Directory of Maryland Photographers 1839-1900).

Since Margaret Gaither does not appear in the family after the 1870 census, my guess is that she died between 1870 and 1880, a chronology  congruent with the dates of Wilkes’ studio location.

All photographs from the Elizabeth J. Gaither Summers album were acquired on ebay from jbatro (johnscollectibles@att.net).

Keeping the Family Together: Elizabeth Gaither Summers

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Old photograph albums are continually being sold, their contents removed and re-sold piecemeal. An album owned by Elizabeth J. Gaither Summers (b. abt. 1866), wife of Baltimore carpenter Charles D. Summers (b. abt. 1870), recently met the same fate.

When a number of identified cabinet card photographs came up for auction on the web recently, I felt a strong desire to keep as many of them together as possible. I began to build a Summers-Gaither family tree (available to registered members on ancestry.com), and to add portraits there.

With the tree and clues from the i.d.’d photos, I’m attempting to reconstruct something of the family’s history.

Elizabeth was the daughter of carpenter Vachel H. Gaither (b. 1824, Anne Arundel Co., Md.) and Margaret Robinson Gaither (b. abt. 1830, Md.).

The Gaithers go back to the very beginning of Anne Arundel County; Vachel’s grandfather and namesake was a Captain in the Severn Battalion of the Maryland Militia during the Revolutionary War.

Intriguingly, it’s the building trade that links the Summers and the Gaithers in Baltimore. Young Vachel brought his family to Baltimore after the Civil War, probably to take advantage of building work as the city boomed.

The Summers family probably came to Baltimore for much the same reasons. Charles’ father, Samuel A. Summers (b. abt. 1832) had been a furniture-maker in Trappe, in south Talbot County.

Son Charles D. Summers took up the house carpentry trade and came to Baltimore with his mother, Anna Louise Ross Summers (b. abt. 1850), daughter of Trappe shoemaker Charles H. Ross and Ellen M. Bullen; probably Samuel’s second wife), and siblings sometime between 1880 and 1900.

The studio of photographer James S. Cummins has been documented at 106 N. Charles Street in Baltimore 1888-1890 and 1893-1899 (Kelbaugh, Directory of Maryland Photographers 1839-1900). Under this assumption, the oldest that Elizabeth Gaither Summers could be in this cabinet card photograph would be about 39 years of age.

All photographs from the Elizabeth J. Gaither Summers album were acquired on ebay from jbatro (johnscollectibles@att.net).

Col. Ellwood Waller Evans, US Army (1866-1917)

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English-born photographer George Richard Buffham (1846-1915) took this photograph of then Maj. Ellwood Waller Evans in the late 1890s.

Buffham and his brother J. H. Buffham may have been the  Buffham Bros. of the eponymous studio in Baltimore in the 1880s. They are found in Baltimore in the 1880 census listed as “picture dealers.”

George Buffham had moved to Annapolis by 1900, and worked there as a photographer at 48 Maryland Avenue until ca. 1910. Buffham may have been the US Naval Academy photographer around that time, when he took out advertisements seeking a managing partner for his Annapolis studio, and directed interested parties to write him at the academy.

Evans, who graduated from West Point in 1887, was a military instructor at St. Johns College in the late 1890s.  He began his career with the 8th Cavalry in Texas, South Dakota, and Montana. When the US went to war with Spain in 1898, Evans was chosen to help lead the 5th Regiment of the Maryland National Guard as the regiment was prepared for active duty, then moved to the 1st Regiment and accompanied them to Cuba, where he served from 1899 to 1902.

After Cuba, Evans served in Missouri, the Phillipines, and Nebraska. Evans then became commander of the First Squadron of the 10th Cavalry, an all-black corps, and led these soldiers with Pershing in the incursion into Mexico (Black Officer in a Buffalo Soldier Regiment: The Military Career of Charles Young, Brian G. Shellum, University of Nebraska Press, 2010, pp. 248, 330).

By now a colonel, Evans died in Pueblo, Colorado on 24 July 1917. According to Evans’ Baltimore Sun obituary of 27 July 1917, the career soldier was serving as inspector-general of the Colorado National Guard at the time of his death.

The Pueblo Chieftain recorded the elaborate pageantry of his military funeral in its 29 July 1917 issue:

“The funeral procession of Colonel Evans was the most spectacular seen in Pueblo for many years, for while the service itself was simple,  the special escort of 800 soldiers, added a touch to the funeral procession which brought home to the hearts of many the seriousness of the present conflict.”

These soldiers, and the officer who accompanied Evans’ body back east, came from Peublo’s Camp Gunter. The camp, likely named for Colorado Gov. Julius Gunter, apparently served as a temporary encampment set up on the Pueblo Colorado fair grounds for the mustering of Colorado National Guard troops at the outbreak of World War I.

The Evans and Waller families had deep roots in Somerset and Worcester counties, Maryland.  Evans’ father, George Washington Evans (1841-1896), was born on his father’s farm on Smith Island. Capt. George W. Evans served during the Civil War in Company I of the 1st Eastern Shore Maryland Infantry, and made  the Army his career after the war ended (Historical Register of the United States Army, Francis Bernard Heitman, 1890, p. 258).

Ellwood’s great-grandfather, William Waller, served in Capt. James Foster’s Company of the 51st Regiment, Maryland Militia, in the 1812 war with the British, and Ellwood was a member of the Society of the War of 1812 on the basis of this ancestry.

His great-great-grandfather, Col. Peter Chaille of Snow Hill, Worcester County, served in the Revolutionary War with the 1st Battalion of the Worcester County, Maryland Militia. Col. Chaille was also a member of the Maryland Convention and the Maryland Lower House from 1777 to 1780.

George Buffham made frequent journeys back to England throughout the early years of the century, and it is possible that his brother and mother returned there permanently. Buffham and his wife may have also returned to England for good around 1910; a brief item in an Annapolis newspaper mentions an urgent trip back to England to attend his ill mother.

The photograph’s  5″ x 3-1/4″ white mount has a pebbled surface with embossed frame design, serrated edges and beveled, square corners, and is dated ca. 1900 by McCulloch. The image is a simple, vignetted bust portrait, perhaps  taken for his wife before he left Annapolis for Cuba in 1898.