Discovering Civil War secrets

MARENGO — Michael Huston, of Wellman, has become somewhat of an expert on Civil War photos.

His fascination came accidentally.

Huston shared his knowledge with visitors to the Iowa County Pioneer Heritage Museum Sunday during its final event of the season.

Huston’s interest in Civil War photographs began when he realized a photo of whom he thought was his ancestor, Elias G. Jackson of Company F, 11th Iowa, wasn’t. The decorative buttons on the uniform and the service jacket the man was wearing signified that he was with the cavalry, not the infantry.

“And this is really how I got started,” Huston said.

Identifying soldiers requires research, said Huston. It’s important to him to get the facts right, he said.

Clues lie in the uniforms, the weapons and even in the studio backdrops.

The man Huston thought was Elias G. Jackson was holding a revolver that most infantry didn’t carry, said Huston, though it could have been a prop provided by the photographer.

The sword in the photo would also have been used by a cavalry soldier.

Huston has many ancestors who served in the Civil War, he said. He’s written articles for “Military Images” magazine and started a Facebook group Iowa Civil War Images in 2022. The page has more than 2,600 Civil War images, and group members can share their own.

Photography was fairly new in the 1860s, said Huston. Exposure times ranged from 10 seconds to a minute. There was no shutter button. The cap was removed from the camera lens for however long the plate needed to be exposed to take an image.

That’s why people didn’t smile, said Huston. A smile is hard to hold, and any movement was blurred in the image.

Daguerreotypes — copper plates with silver coatings — were the first types of images, introduced in the late 1850s, said Huston. Ambrotypes, tintypes and albumen prints were also produced during the Civil War.

Ambrotypes and ruby ambrotypes were very clear, Huston said, but they were glass, and therefore fragile.

Having their portraits taken became common for Civil War soldiers, said Huston. Carte de visite became popular from about 1863 through the end of the Civil War.

The carte de visite was printed from a negative on thin paper, then glued to a thicker card. They were smaller then regular portraits and used like trading cards.

Because of the demand for portraits, photography studios popped up all over during the early 1860s, some in permanent buildings and others as mobile studios.

Though soldiers were paid only about $13 a month, many would splurge on a portrait.

“It really was a luxury,” said Huston, and the federal government put a luxury tax on them late in the war.

That’s another way to date Civil War photos, said Huston Images that have a luxury stamp were made after late 1864.

In early photos, the men heading off to war exude a sense of adventure, said Huston. They were young. Many were leaving home for the first time and many were being photographed for the first time.

Photos from later in the war show worn men, often with no weapons at all.

“You see that with a lot of these photos,” said Huston.

Uniforms weren’t consistent early in the war, said Huston. Iowa soldiers started the war in gray satinet because that’s the fabric the governor was able to get. The style of the uniforms varied based on how different women cut them, he said.

The four-button sack coat became popular because it didn’t have so many buttons to lose and replace.

The 28th Iowa “had these super cool Zouave jackets,” Huston said. They were tailored in New Orleans and were unique to that unit, Huston said.

By the time the Iowa soldiers fought at Wilson’s Creek in 1861, their uniforms were in shambles, said Huston. And the governor made the soldiers pay for their own replacements. Their families were still being reimbursed for the uniforms up to 1918, said Huston.

Painted backdrops can help identify soldiers in photos, said Huston. The backdrops were painted backward so they would be correct on the photographic plate; the process reversed the image. Different studios had different backdrops.

Huston has also identified studios by tile floors or carpet in the studio.

Sometimes Huston buys Civil War photos and thinks he will never be able to identify the soldier. But research will often produce a positive result. “Don’t ever throw this stuff away,” he said.

“Iowa overall was very patriotic,” said Huston. Nearly 800 men from Iowa County fought in the Civil War, about 10% of the county population at the time, said Huston.

“It was the first war that ever was photographed.”

Civil War Photo Sleuth is a good research tool for identifying photos, said Huston. It uses facial recognition to match photos that might be unidentified with others that have been identified.

Huston also uses Google Lens.

The Civil War Data website, civilwardata.com costs about $25 a year but allows people to search for soldiers by town, by regiment and by name, Huston said.

Huston’s Iowa Civil War Images Presentation can be seen on YouTube.