Image is of Edmond Houston posed with one arm resting on a cloth covered table. He wears a rather long dark commercial sack coat with light-colored trousers bearing a dark NCO stripe on each leg.

Contrast and clarity are excellent. Paper and mount have only the slightest surface dirt.

Reverse has no photographer’s imprint. Bottom has a period ink inscription of “COMPLIMENTS OF ED HOUSTON, 143D REGT. N.Y. S.V.” The ID is repeated at top in modern pencil.

Edmond Houston was born in Orange County, New York. At the time of his enlistment he was a 25 year old harness maker standing 5’ 3” tall, with blue eyes, auburn hair and a light complexion. Houston enlisted as a private on August 11, 1862 and at some point was promoted to corporal only to be reduced to the ranks on April 15, 1863. His New York state muster sheets show him as a nurse in a hospital at Yorktown from November 1862 till June of 1863 and then returned to his Company as he is listed as being mustered out at Washington, D.C. on July 20, 1865.

In regards to Houston’s post-war life, he moved to Winchester, Virginia where he continued to ply his trade as a harness maker and rose to be commander of the Mulligan Post #30 of the GAR there. A published article discussed his efforts on behalf of the Winchester National Cemtery as follows:

“Dedicated on April 8, 1866, but not officially deeded to the U.S. government until four years later, the Winchester National Cemetery had become by the 1880s, in the estimation of Edmund M. Houston, one of the Mulligan Post’s charter members, “sadly neglected, from the lack of loyal sympathy of the citizens” of Winchester.

Houston, a veteran of the 143rd New York Infantry who worked as a harness maker in Winchester after the conflict, believed that the GAR’s members from across the nation and the states whose dead rested in the cemetery should bear the financial responsibility in caring for the graves. Houston implored his comrades and the GAR’s leadership in the pages of the National Tribune for the “necessary appropriations… either by the National Encampment… or by the several Departments of different States.” The native New Yorker challenged the Empire State to “furnish her quota of recognitions” for the more than 700 New York soldiers buried in the cemetery.

… Houston continued petitions for assistance. Slightly more than one month prior to Memorial Day in 1892 Houston again appealed to his comrades in The National Tribune. “A murmur passes through the comrades of Mulligan Post 30, in the historic Shenandoah Valley: How can we better observe Memorial Day? With so few in number the burden of responsibility upon us in the South is a tax more than we feel able to assume,” Houston wrote. Although pleased that “some of the departments contributed last year flags for decoration,” Houston seethed that “in the main most remain quiet or deaf to the appeals from the mounds where underneath lie those who shared their hardships.”

Beyond its commitment to the Union dead in the Winchester National Cemetery, the Mulligan Post always aided various regimental associations in the decades after the conflict to commemorate fallen comrades in the Shenandoah Valley and beyond. In September 1888, slightly more than one year after its creation, the Mulligan Post welcomed veterans from the 3rd Massachusetts Cavalry for the dedication of a regimental monument in Winchester’s National Cemetery. The Mulligan Post’s hospitality and support for the dedication, which included six-year old Carrie Houston, daughter of commander Edmond Houston, “crown[ing] the monument with flowers,” so impressed the Massachusetts veterans that they eventually presented Houston with “a handsomely ornamented and mounted” belt and sword engraved…Commander E.M. Houston, Winchester, Va., from the Third Massachusetts Cavalry.” (full article can be found here https://www.historynet.com/union-veterans-winchester-reconstruction/ .   [ad][ph:L]

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