Civil War Era Photographic Portraiture no. 7
Originally Published in American Civil War Chronicles

John T. Hughes (July 25, 1817 — August 11, 1862) was a colonel in the Missouri State Guard and Confederate Army during the American Civil War. He might also have been a brigadier general at the time of his death but documentation of the appointment is lacking.

Hughes returned to Missouri in the summer of 1862 to recruit for the Confederacy. At this time he may have been appointed as either an acting Confederate or Missouri State Guard brigadier general. No record of the appointment has been found but he was known as “general.”

He, his recruits, and several other recruiting or partisan bands united to attack the garrison of Independence, Missouri on August 11, 1862, with Hughes in overall command. During this battle (the First Battle of Independence), he was killed instantly by a shot to the head while leading a charge, but the city was captured. He is interred at Woodlawn Cemetery in Independence. He left behind a wife, Mary, and five young sons. (Wikipedia)

Drought, Dust, Depression, and War No. 24

Coal miner’s son had been digging coal from refuse on the roadside. Scotts Run, West Virginia. Lewis Hine.¹ December 23, 1936.

I try to not focus on any specific location or time in this series of but sometimes publishing something related to a recent post just makes sense.  I had just finished and scheduled Scotts Run, West Virginia, 1938, featuring a 1938 photo from the Library of Congress by Marion Post Wolcott of a young girl carrying kerosene.  Later that same day, I came across more photos of Scott’s Run, images by Lewis Hine in the National Archives.

This image of a barefoot boy in the snow stood out.

A mine war’s series of strikes and lockouts from 1924 until 1931 threw the Scotts Run miners and their families into poverty. The industry could not sustain the economic downturn after the 1929 stock market collapse.

Original Caption: Scott’s Run, West Virginia. Miner’s child—This boy was digging coal from mine refuse on the roadside. The picture was taken on December 23, 1936 on a cold day; Scott’s Run was buried in snow. The child was barefoot and seemed to be used to it. He was a quarter-mile from his home.²

1. Lewis Wickes Hine (September 26, 1874 – November 3, 1940) was an American sociologist and photographer. Hine used his camera as a tool for social reform. His photographs were instrumental in changing child labor laws in the United States. Born in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, in 1874, He became a teacher in New York City at the Ethical Culture School, where he encouraged his students to use photography as an educational medium. In 1908, Hine became the photographer for the National Child Labor Committee (NCLC), leaving his teaching position.  During the Great Depression Hine again worked for the Red Cross, photographing drought relief in the American South, and for the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), documenting life in the mountains of eastern Tennessee. He also served as chief photographer for the Works Progress Administration’s National Research Project, which studied changes in industry and their effect on employment.
   • “Lewis Hine.” Wikipedia, as edited July 4, 2021. Accessed October 7, 2021. https://en.wikipedia.org… Lewis_Hine.
2. “Scott’s Run, West Virginia. Miner’s Child.” National Archives and Records Administration. Accessed October 5, 2021. https://catalog.archives.gov/id/518366.

Royalty-free images by Mike¹ — No. 160 of over 1200 images

Bent’s Old Fort National Historic Site, near La Junta, Colorado, September 5, 2018

Built by fur and Indian trading business Bent, St. Vrain & Company in 1833, Bent’s Fort—then called Fort William—was a very strongly built trading post at a strategic location on the Sante Fe Trail near the north bank of the Arkansas River.  Proximity to the Rockies brought trappers in with their beaver pelts.  Also near the hunting grounds of various Plains tribes, such as Arapaho, Kiowa, and Southern Cheyenne, the post traded tobacco, axes, firearms and other goods for the Indians’ buffalo robes, horses and mules.

When built, the fort was on the border across the Arkansas River from Mexico.  In May 1846, the U.S. Congress declared war on Mexico.  A month later, General Stephen W. Kearny Army West of the left Fort Leavenworth and by the end of August, his forces had gained control of New Mexico.  Kearney established a joint civil and military government, appointing Charles Bent, then living in Taos, as acting civil governor.

On Jnuary 14, 1847, Governor Bent traveled to his home in Taos without military escort.  After his arravial he was skalped alive and assasinated by a newly formed group of Hispanics and Taos Indians.²

Post Endnotes

1. 1. I am sharing some of my public domain images in periodic blog posts.
   2. Wroth, William. “Charles Bent, Biographical Sketch.” New Mexico History. Accessed October 4, 2021. http://www.aztecnm.com… Bent.pdf.

Series Notes:

• This image is also shared as public domain on Pixabay, Flickr, and Pinterest.
• Images are being shared in the sequence they were accepted by Pixabay, a royalty-free image-sharing site.
• Only images specifically identified as such are public domain or creative commons on our pages.
• All other images are copyright protected by me, creative commons, or used under the provisions of fair use.

Drought, Dust, Depression, and War No. 23
The Bitter Years No.3 ¹

Coal miner’s child taking home kerosene for lamps. Company houses, coal tipple in background. Pursglove, Scotts Run, West Virginia. Marion Post Wolcott.² September 1938.³

Scotts Run is a five-mile-long hollow in West Virginia across the Monogahela River from Morgantown. It runs along a stream by the same name flowing through the communities of Cassville, Jere, Pursglove, and Osage.  Situated on the thickest and most extensive coal bed in the Appalachian Basin,⁴ through the late 19th century the area was agricultural, farmers mainly raising livestock because the hillsides were unsuitable for crops.

By 1902, two coal companies had purchased land near the mouth of Scotts Run. The lack of rail service slowed the area’s mining development until the twenty-three-mile Morgantown and Wheeling Railroad was completed in 1916.^{5, 6} From 57,000 tons of coal in 1899 and 400,000 tons in 1914, coal production in Monongalia County soared to nearly 4.4 million tons in 1921. Much of the expansion was in Scotts Run.  During its peak years in the mid-1920s, coal companies owned 75% of the taxable acres with thirty-six mines extracting coal.  The five-mile hollow became one of the most developed mining districts in the country with at least seventy-three companies in operation between 1917 and 1942. Importation of workers resulted in a racially and ethnically diverse population About 60% were foreign-born, mostly southern or eastern European. The remaining 40% were equally divided between American-born blacks and whites.⁷

A spike in the demand for coal during World War I contributed to a rush to develop the coalfield. Coal prices doubled and by the peak in November 1920 had reached $12.53/ton.

Rapid industrial and mining development brought about a profound social change along Scotts Run. During the largest boom year of 1923, a coal industry publication description of Casswell said it was,

…a sleepy little village that has been there for years. Its residents do not yet comprehend what has taken place in their little community to transform it into a great hive of industry, with rows of dwellings, stores, schools, churches, power houses, generating stations, and tipples that lie in an almost unbroken line for five miles.⁸

The Scotts Run “hive of industry” declined severely over the next ten years as coal prices and demand declined.  A coal war in northern West Virginia with a disastrous series of strikes and lockouts lasted from 1924 until 1931.  The mine war threw the miners and their families into poverty and many of the operators into bankruptcy.⁹ Already suffering, the industry could not sustain the economic downturn after the 1929 stock market collapse.

The suffering of the poor in Scotts Run probably differed little from that of other Appalachia coal hollows.  Because of accessibility by automobile and railroad, it garnered national attention from photographers, reporters, social workers, and government officials.¹⁰

1. The 1962 exhibition, “The Bitter Years 1935-1941,” was Edward Steichen’s last as Director of the Department of Photography at New York’s  Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). The images in the exhibition were personally selected by Steichen from 270,000 photos taken for the Farm Security Administration by a team of photographers employed between 1935 and 1941 to document (primarily) rural America during the Great Depression.
2. Marion Post (June 7, 1910 – November 24, 1990), later Marion Post Wolcott, was a noted American photographer who worked for the Farm Security Administration during the Great Depression documenting poverty and deprivation.
   • “Marion Post Wolcott.” Wikipedia, as edited January 10, 2021. Accessed October 3, 2021. https://en.wikipedia.org… Marion_Post_Wolcott.
3. Poos Françoise. The Bitter Years: Edward Steichen and the Farm Security Administration Photographs. New York: D.A.P./Distributed Art Publishers, Inc., 2012. page 59.
4. “Pittsburgh Coal Seam.” Wikipedia, as edited June 28, 2021. Accessed October 3, 2021. https://en.wikipedia.org… Pittsburgh_coal_seam.
5. “Scotts Run, West Virginia.” Wikipedia. as edited October 3, 2021. Accessed October 3, 2021. https://en.wikipedia.org… Scotts_Run.  (I made a minor edit to clarify a sentence.)
6. “Wonder Coal Field of West Virginia.” The Black Diamond, 1923, 71, no. 6 (August 11, 1923): 180–181.
7. Lewis, Ronald L. “Scotts Run – America’s Symbol of the Great Depression in the Coal Fields.” Scotts Run Writing Heritage Project. Accessed October 3, 2021. http://www.as.wvu.edu….
8. “Sewickley Coal is Premier Steam Fuel.” The Black Diamond, 1923, 71, no. 6 (August 11, 1923): 182–185.
9. Lewis.
10. “Scotts Run, West Virginia—Great Depression era.” Wikipedia. as edited October 3, 2021. Accessed October 3, 2021. https://en.wikipedia.org… Scotts_Run —Great Depression era.

Civil War Era Photographic Portraiture no. 6
Originally Published in American Civil War Chronicles

Title: [Major Robert Olin Peatross of Co. E, 30th Virginia Infantry Regiment and Field and Staff with sword]
Related Names: Rees, Charles R. , photographer (attributed name
Date Created/Published: [between 1861 and 1865]
Medium: 2 photographs in 1 case : ninth-plate ambrotype and sixth-plate ambrotype, hand-colored ; 8 x 9 cm (case)
Summary: Photograph shows identified soldier.
Reproduction Number: LC-DIG-ppmsca-37404 (digital file from original item, both photos) LC-DIG-ppmsca-37287 (digital file from original item, left photo) LC-DIG-ppmsca-37288 (digital file from original item, right photo)
Rights Advisory: No known restrictions on publication.
Access Advisory: Use digital images. Original served only by appointment because material requires special handling. For more information see: (http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/info/617_apptonly.html)
Call Number: AMB/TIN no. 3091 [P&P]
Repository: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA
Notes:
….Title devised by Library staff.
….Case: Berg, no. 3-111.
Gift; Tom Liljenquist; 2014; (DLC/PP 2014:202)
….More information about this collection is available at http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pp.lilj
….Purchased from: The Virginia Confederate, Waldorf, Maryland, 2013.
….Forms part of: Liljenquist Family Collection of Civil War Photographs (Library of Congress).
….Forms part of: Ambrotype/Tintype photograph filing series (Library of Congress).

Library of Congress Permalink

___________
Mike’s notes:

Note – This image has been digitally adjusted for one or more of the following:
– fade correction,
– color, contrast, and/or saturation enhancement
– selected spot and/or scratch removal
– cropped for composition and/or to accentuate subject

50 Years Ago No. 4

“Fall Hardware-Housewares Promotion 1971.” Popular Science, Vol 199, no. 4,
October 1971, page 135.

Dust, Drought, Depression, and War No. 22

While the Great Depression is usually associated with windblown erosion, many areas of the United States had for decades suffered from soil erosion of disturbed soil by rain. Much of this loss was from cultivated and abandoned fields and overgrazed pastures and ranges¹  while unsustainable logging practices stripped mountain watersheds and wreaked havoc on mountain wildlife and fisheries with local economies, once self-sufficient, finding themselves in decline.²

Typical eroded road near proposed Mammoth Cave National Park and CCC Camp # 4,
Tom Jones, September 12, 1934

By the 20th century, generations of mismanagement had badly damaged much of the nation’s land resources and watersheds.  Removal of forest growth, grasses, and shrubs, and breaking of the ground’s surface by cultivation, overgrazing and trampling by livestock, the building of roads, mining, etc., created conditions that resulted in accelerated soil erosion far beyond what had previously taken place under natural conditions.³ In the South, constant cultivation of cotton and tobacco had damaged soil, robbing it of nutrients needed for crops to grow well and making it more susceptible to erosion.⁴

Outskirts of Tupelo, Mississippi, with structures and erosion, Walker Evans, March 1936

In 1934, Arthur E. Morgan, head of the Tennessee Valley Authority, said that surveys showed that “in the period of settlement—a little over a hundred years—one-half of the good farmlands of the Tennessee Valley had been quite ruined by soil erosion (water)” and that in some of the hill sections of Georgia the land had already washed away so badly that some counties had lost half of their farm population.⁵

Erosion. Stewart County, Georgia. Arthur Rothstein, February 1937

On May 1, 1935, President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 7027 establishing a new federal agency to be known as the “Resettlement Administration” (RA). Its mandate included initiating projects associated with soil erosion, stream pollution, seacoast erosion, reforestation, forestation, and flood control.⁶  The RA was involved in a variety of activities during its two years of existence and had absorbed similar New Deal programs.

1930s Resettlement Administration poster, Bernarda Bryson

American farmers had been particularly hurt by the 1930s economic downturn.  Hit by both the Great Depression and plummeting crop prices, often with debt accumulated over many years, “many, if not most faced serious problems of soil erosion, worn-out land, drought, and floods.”⁷

Erosion south of Franklin, Heard County, Georgia, Jack Delano, April 1941

1. Bennett, Hugh Hammond, and William Ridgely Chapline. “Soil Erosion A National Menace .” Washington, D.C.: U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, April 1928. Internet Archive. Accessed October 1, 2021. https://archive.org/…soil erosion.
2. Martin, Brent. “Forest Removal in the Georgia Mountains.” Georgia Forest Watch. New Georgia Encyclopedia, July 18, 2003. Accessed October 1, 2021. https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/…georgia-mountains.
3. Bennett and Chapline.
4. Bishop, RoAnn. “Agriculture in North Carolina during the Great Depression.” Originally published as “Difficult Days on Tar Heel Farms.” Tar Heel Junior Historian. NCpedia, 2010. Accessed October 1, 2021. https://www.ncpedia.org/…great-depression.
5. Smith, J. Russell. “The Drought—Act of God and Freedom.” Survey Graphic 23, no. 9, September 1934. https://exit78.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/surveygraphic23survrich_420.pdf
6. Roosevelt, Franklin D. “Executive Order 7027 Establishing the Resettlement Administration.” The American Presidency Project, May 1, 1935. Accessed October 1, 2021. https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/…resettlement-administration.
7. “Resettlement Administration (RA) (1935).” Living New Deal, October 20, 2020. Accessed October 1, 2021. https://livingnewdeal.org/…resettlement-administration.

This post is part of a continuing series of posts exploring the almost 16 years between the crash of the stock market and the end of World War 2—no limits, no specific focus.

Posts already prepared—both published and scheduled—are listed at Dust, drought, depression, and war – the posts.

Royalty-free images by Mike¹ — No. 159 of over 1200 images

Mountain cottontail at Devil’s Tower National Monument, Wyoming, August 28, 2007

Mountain cottontail²

The mountain cottontail or Nuttall’s cottontail (Sylvilagus nuttallii) is a species of mammal in the family Leporidae. It is found in Canada and the United States.

A small rabbit, its size is relatively large for the genus. Hind legs are long; the feet are densely covered with long hair. Ears are relatively short and rounded at the tips; the inner surfaces are noticeably haired. It has pale brown fur on the back, a distinct pale brown nape on the back of the head, black-tipped ears, a white-grey tail, and a white underside. The brown nape on the back of the head is a smaller size from than that of the Snowshoe Hare, helping to distinguish the two separate species from each other.

(read more)

Post Endnotes

1. 1. I am sharing some of my public domain images in periodic blog posts.
   2. “Mountain Cottontail.” Wikipedia, as edited June 17, 2021. Accessed October 4, 2021. https://en.wikipedia.org… Mountain_cottontail.

Series Notes:

• This image is also shared as public domain on Pixabay, Flickr, and Pinterest.
• Images are being shared in the sequence they were accepted by Pixabay, a royalty-free image-sharing site.
• Only images specifically identified as such are public domain or creative commons on our pages.
• All other images are copyright protected by me, creative commons, or used under the provisions of fair use.

Early Color Photography No. 2
Vintage Camping No. 3

Nochevka u kamni a na beregu Chusovo
(Translation: Night camp by a rock on the bank of the Chusovaia)
1912, Sergey Mikhaylovich Prokudin-Gorsky

Documenting the Russian Empire in Color^{1, 2}

Outfitted with a specially equipped railroad-car darkroom provided by Tsar Nicholas II and in possession of two permits that granted him access to restricted areas and cooperation from the empire’s bureaucracy, Sergey Mikhaylovich Prokudin-Gorsky documented the Russian Empire between around 1909 and 1915. He conducted many illustrated lectures of his work. His photographs offer a vivid portrait of a lost world—the Russian Empire on the eve of World War I and the coming Russian Revolution. His subjects ranged from the medieval churches and monasteries of old Russia, to the railroads and factories of an emerging industrial power, to the daily life and work of Russia’s diverse population.

1. “Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky.” Wikipedia, as last edited September 8, 2021. Accessed October, 2, 2021. https://en.wikipedia….Prokudin-Gorsky.
2. In the photographic process used by Prokudin-Gorsky, “the visible spectrum of colors was divided into three channels of information by capturing it in the form of three black-and-white photographs, one taken through a red filter, one through a green filter, and one through a blue filter. The resulting three photographs could be projected through filters of the same colors and exactly superimposed on a screen, synthesizing the original range of color additively; or viewed as an additive color image by one person at a time through an optical device known generically as a chromoscope or photochromoscope, which contained colored filters and transparent reflectors that visually combined the three into one full-color image; or used to make photographic or mechanical prints in the complementary colors cyan, magenta and yellow, which, when superimposed, reconstituted the color subtractively.”