This CDV is a fine specimen of Civil War era photography and shows a tall, stern-faced individual identified as “Jessie McNeill”. Before the Civil War, Jessie Cunningham McNeill with his father John Hanson McNeill and family, migrated from West Missouri to Virginia.  During the Civil War, the Confederate government authorized the organization and use of ‘partisan’ or guerilla forces against the Federal army.  In Hardin County, Virginia, now West Virginia, John ‘Hanse’ McNeill formed a company of partisans called McNeill’s Rangers, which included his son, Jessie, as second in command.  McNeill’s Rangers, copying the antics of John S. Mosby and his men, engaged in a number of wartime exploits against the Union army including capturing and harassing Federal troops, capturing trains and supplies and capturing two Union Generals.  Hanse McNeil was killed in the war but Jessie survived the war and migrated with his family to the west, settling in Mahomet, IL where he died in 1922.

Image measures 2 3/8” wide x 4” high and is clean and free of blemishes. McNeil is viewed standing tall and erect in a photo studio and looks menacingly at the camera with a full beard and no hat.  He is dressed in civilian attire of a white shirt with a dark bow tie, dark trousers and wearing a ¾ length light colored jacket or duster.  Over-the-knee length black leather boots cover his feet and legs.  His right hand rests on a book like object, possibly a Bible, atop a side table next to him.  Handwritten inscription in black ink at the bottom of the picture reads “Jessie McNeill  Mosby’s man”. No backmark. Backside of the CDV looks to have been peeled away from a pasteboard cover or book.   A fine condition, Civil War era, CDV image of Jessie McNeill, a CS partisan ranger during the Civil War.

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