This sixth plate ambrotype shows an armed Confederate soldier wearing a Richmond Depot Type-II jacket with the high-dome recessed-center wood buttons supplied by John and George Gibson starting in late 1862. The Type-II jacket retained the shoulder tabs of the Type-I, but did away with the colored branch of service trim and seems to have come in during the first part of 1862. The buttons were supplied by the Gibsons in the millions and can be seen on the jackets of the Confederate dead photographed at Gettysburg in 1863.

The soldier is likely young, but looks a bit older with long, but square cut hair and chin beard, and is posed in a conventional half-length seated view, with one elbow resting on a table. Most unusually, he is carrying a Kerr revolver, which he has thrust into the front of his belt for the camera. These were made by the London Armoury Company from 1859 to 1866, with an estimated total of around 11,500, the vast majority of which were imported by the Confederacy. Estimates are that as many as 9,000 were acquired on contracts by the Confederate government or its agents, with others privately purchased on the secondary market. It is hard to think of another pistol not made in the south with a stronger, more exclusively Confederate association.

Our man holds his hat in his lap. One side of the brim is turned up, by his hold on it or because it is attached in some way, but it adds to the cavalry association implied by the revolver. The front of the hat has a cloth emblem that at first sight seems to be a clover of some sort, but which we think is actually a Bottony Cross, an emblem strongly associated with Maryland. This comes from the collection of the late Bill Turner, Virginia collector and dealer, who identified the subject as a trooper from the 18^th Virginia Cavalry. We don’t know the basis for the identification, but many of Bill’s pieces were acquired directly from families. It is just a guess, of course, but if our reading of the hat insignia is correct, our man may have been a Maryland native who went over the Virginia border to join the Confederate army and ended up in a Virginia regiment, something not unusual and well documented. In any case, the 18^th Virginia had a very good record, was organized in late 1862 from members of the 1^st VA Partisan Rangers, served under Imboden and W.L. Jackson, fought in the Gettysburg Campaign, and served in West Virginia and the Shenandoah Valley, before finally disbanding in April 1865.

The image has a little solarization, but shows nice detail and is housed in an elegant case with embossed cover in imitation of a miniature book, with hinged clasp. The interior has an embossed red facing pad and nice gilt blindstamped borders. The glass, mat and frame are intact. It would be a great addition to a Confederate cavalry display.    [sr] [ph:m]

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