(Albany, New York: 1860-62).
Price: $2,500.00
Hardcover. Octavo. Dark red decorated morocco over boards, stamped in gold and in blind, green patterned endpapers, all edges gilt. Bookseller’s blind embossed stamp of S.R. Gray, Albany, N.Y., on front fly leaf. Contains 29 albumen and salted paper oval vignette portraits of the New York State Normal School faculty and students, each inscribed or signed below the images, including professors Rodney Kimball and Albert N. Husted, who organized Company E, (44th New York Vols.), also known as the “Normal School Company,” as it was made up from a cadre of professors and students from the school. Also included is a portrait of the school’s principal David Cochran, two young female teachers (Mary E. Butler and Louisa Ostrom), and other students who later enlisted in the Union Army. The album also contains several autograph entries without photographs. Top of front joint is lightly split and has a few small holes, wear at the corners, a few small light stains, very good.
The album documenting many leading figures at the New York Normal School, several of whom later served in the Civil War. The 44th NY Vols. formed in the summer and fall of 1861, in response to the death of Colonel Elmer Ellsworth in Alexandria, the first officer to die in the war, and the regiment thus became known as the “Ellsworth Avengers”. Rodney Kimball served as Captain, and Albert Husted as Lieutenant of Company E which participated in seventeen battles of the Civil War. Other notable recruits pictured in album include Thompson Barrick, who served as first lieutenant of the U.S. Colored Troops (he suffered a bullet wound in the neck); and Asa Howard who served as lieutenant in the 27th NY Vols. He was wounded at Bull Run, re-enlisted, and later died of fever.
Kimball commanded the Company at the battle of Fredericksburg and up through February, 1863, when he was honorably discharged on a surgeon’s certificate of disability; Husted participated in all seventeen engagements and was slightly wounded at the battle of Chancellorsville. He also was honorably discharged in October, 1864. An uncommon early autograph album notable for its many original photographs, including several images of young men who enlisted in the Union Army during the Civil War.
Item #546009
