Research reveals the identity of the photographer who produced a famous series of Texas Brigade images.
Four images of Texas Brigade soldiers were made during their 1861-1862 winter camp at Dumfries, Va., a season that proved to be crucial in the formation of the storied unit. Two of those photographs show cabins identified by signs on their doors as the “Wigfall Mess” and the “Beauregard Mess.” The cabin in the third photo also appears to have a sign on the door, though it’s unreadable, while the fourth image shows another mess with neither a wooden door nor a sign. The men in the fourth photo are the only ones identified by name, all members of Company L, 1st Texas.
The series provides a rare glimpse of Confederate soldiers in camp, enduring images of one of the hardest-fighting brigades in the Army of Northern Virginia, before battle decimated its ranks. But despite the intimate nature of these scenes, little has been known about how they were made, and the photographer has until now been unidentified.
A number of early letters from the brigade members mention individual portraits that were sent home, or requests for a loved one to send a photo to Virginia. Most of the soldiers’ photos were taken before the Texans ever left home, or at stops en route to Virginia or after they arrived in Richmond. T.D. Rock of Company F, 1st Texas, reflected the early-war sentiments of other Texans when he wrote home, “I sent my picture to you by Dudley and if it should be the will of God that you should never more behold the Original, you will have the proud consolation that your son perished in a great and glorious cause….”
There are several known instances of professional photographers who set up temporary studios in winter camps, accompanied troops on campaigns and photographed battlefields, but there is no evidence that this was the case with the Texans. Sometimes newspaper advertisements or articles can be found announcing the sale or display of such photos, such as the well-known October 1862 New York Times article concerning Mathew Brady’s exhibition of photos of the “Dead at Antietam.” But with the Texas camp images shown here, no real clues had ever surfaced to identify the photographer.
When I recently traveled to Galveston, Texas, for a wedding, I seized the opportunity to head to the Rosenberg Library to look for Texas Brigade material. After several hours of searching finding aids and looking through collections—including one with a carte de visite showing one of the Dumfries images—I looked through a folder of William and Charles Schadt letters. The brothers, who were from Galveston, served in Company L, 1st Texas, and their collection of 30 letters written mostly to their sister reflects many significant moments in the Texans’ wartime careers (see P. 39 for images of the Schadt brothers). Perhaps most moving is the letter William wrote home to break the news of the “death of dear Brother Charley” during the Peninsula Campaign, in the Texans’ first engagement at Eltham’s Landing on May 7, 1862.
The Schadts wrote several letters from their Dumfries encampment at Camp Wigfall during 1861-62. I was halfway through an April 2, 1862, letter from William when the words seemed to jump off the page: “When we were in winter quarters Tom Blessing in our company had some dauguean [sic] fixings send [sic] to him and he went to work taking pictures in [sic] we have had a picture taken of the mess you can see it by calling on Mr. Waters or F. Hitchcock either of them will let you have one to take a copy of if you want it.”
My heart started racing as I read and reread that letter. After so many hours of searching specifically for the identity of the photographer, I’d found what I wanted when I wasn’t really anticipating it. The Dumfries photographer had actually been a soldier in the Texas Brigade. But who was this man who had obtained “dauguean fixings,” and how did he know what to do with them?
It turns out that Solomon Thomas “Tom” Blessing, who did indeed serve with William Schadt in Company L, was one of three brothers who worked as professional photographers before and after the war. Between the three of them, they owned or operated studios in New Orleans, Houston and Galveston. Clearly he had the knowledge and skills to take the photographs.
In a revealing three-page interview originally published in 1912 in Mamie Yeary’s Reminiscences of the Boys in Gray, 1861-1865, Blessing wrote about many of his wartime experiences. They included receiving a “bayonet wound in the hand” and having the corner of the New Testament he carried being “shot off.” While he never actually mentioned the Dumfries photographs in that interview, Tom Blessing ended his reminiscence with the sentence, “The war being over I went back to my old business, that of photography.”
Fortunately for Hood’s Texas Brigade fans, thanks to the correspondence of Private William Schadt we now know that Tom Blessing had also taken up his “old business,” if only briefly, at Dumfries during that cold winter of 1861-1862. He has left us with a photographic window into the storied Texas unit.
Originally published in the August 2011 issue of Civil War Times. To subscribe, click here.
