Faces From the Past, Part 2

Yesterday I said that seeing reconstructed images of unidentified Civil War sailors would not be likely to generate an "Oh, look! It's Dad!" reaction.  I stand corrected.  It seems that the portrait of an unidentified Confederate soldier has generated a "Oh, look! It's Uncle Dave!" reaction, and now the uniformed young man gazing out of it has a name, a history, and a family.

According to a Washington Post story, David M. Thatcher, from Martinsburg, VA, enlisted in Company B, Berkeley Troop, First Virginia Cavalry, and was killed in battle at age 19 in 1863.  He is buried in the cemetery at Martinsburg's Tuscarora Presbyterian Church.

The portrait in question was donated to the Library of Congress last October.  While the uniform and equipment in the picture provided a great deal of information about its subject, what it couldn't provide was a name, and so he was just an unknown face used in a Library of Congress advertisement. The wife of one of his relatives happened to see the advertisement last week and immediately recognized Uncle Dave because of another portrait that has been kept in the family.

The full story can be read here.

Faces From the Past

By the mid-part of the 19th century, it was clear that exploding bombs and incendiary missiles were a problem for wooden warships.  The solution was to move to wrapping wooden hulled steam-ships with iron, followed by a push towards designing ironclad ships that are the ancestors of today's great steel battleships. 

The first use of ironclads in battle came during the U.S. Civil War 1862, when the USS Monitor and the CSS Virginia, formally called USS Merrimack, hammered each other at the Battle of Hampton Roads.  Tactically, the engagement was a draw.

The Virginia was a standard wooden warship that had been wrapped in iron.  The Monitor, on the other hand, had been designed and built as an ironclad.  As so often happens, the design had a flaw -while the Monitor was well-suited for river combat, she had a low freeboard and heavy turret, so she was not seaworthy in rough waters.  As a consequence, she was lost in a storm off Cape Hatteras, NC, in December of 1862.

Fast forward.  In 1973, the wreck of the Monitor was found off Hatteras, and the site was designated the first U.S. marine sanctuary.  In 1986, it was designated a National Historic Landmark.  Due to the high cost and potential of damage, plans to raise the entire ship were scrapped, but over time the propeller, the steam engine, and the revolving gun turret have been brought up.  When divers were preparing to remove the gun turret, they discovered the remains of two trapped crewmen.

Now, nearly 150 years after they died in the sinking Monitor, NOAA  has released forensic reconstructions of the faces of the two crewmen in hopes of aiding in their identification.

It's not quite as if someone will see these pictures and say "Oh!  Look!  It's Dad!" But perhaps there is a family picture somewhere, perhaps a family story of someone who didn't come home from the war, and maybe someday these men will be identified and go home to the proper burial they deserve. Until then, their remains are held by the POW-MIA Accounting Command at Hickam AFB in Hawaii.

The full story can be read here.