The Revolutionary War Veterans Who Had Their Pictutures Taken

June 6, 2017 8:24 PM

he Revolutionary War ended in 1783 and photography was invented in the 1820s and 1830s, so most of the veterans of the war didn’t live long enough to have their portraits made. A handful of them did. In 1864, 81 years after the war, Reverend E. B. Hillard and two photographers embarked on a trip through New England to visit, photograph, and interview the six known surviving veterans, all of whom were over 100 years old. The glass plate photos were printed into a book titled The Last Men of the Revolution.

(Via)

posted by growabrain (24 comments total)

I don't know about all these guys, but Dr. Eleas Munson seems like a man I would be honored to buy a glass of ale. I'm judging by appearances alone, and a minute of internet research, which is pretty much how we judge people these days, amirite?
posted by kozad at 8:45 PM on June 6, 2017 [1 favorite]

Samuel Downing Dr. Emmett Brown
posted by littlesq at 9:04 PM on June 6, 2017 [1 favorite]

To the union!
To the revolution!
posted by entropicamericana at 9:08 PM on June 6, 2017 [5 favorites]

I bet Adam Link could tell a whopper with a gleam in his eye, while swearing it was the Gospel the whole time, just to tweak your nose at the end of the story, and laugh because you believed another one of his tall tales.
posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 10:39 PM on June 6, 2017 [2 favorites]

It's sad that medical science hadn't advanced enough by the time his picture was taken to rectify the terrible wound caused by the fragment from that barrel bomb, but amazing that George Fishley survived so long regardless.
posted by Devonian at 11:52 PM on June 6, 2017 [3 favorites]

It does have to be said that these are some pretty Revolutionary War looking dudes.
posted by brennen at 11:58 PM on June 6, 2017 [3 favorites]

George Fishley survived the winter at Valley Forge.
posted by Ideefixe at 12:35 AM on June 7, 2017 [6 favorites]

It's worth pointing out that life expectancy in the time these photos were taken was about 37, nearly tripling it. To put that in perspective, this would be like having a 224 year old person today.
posted by dr_dank at 4:14 AM on June 7, 2017 [1 favorite]

For really, really old fellows, most of them look pretty good and still have their hair.
posted by mermayd at 5:02 AM on June 7, 2017

shame that that photo was snapped JUST after Simeon Hicks dropped his monocle.
posted by entropone at 5:19 AM on June 7, 2017

It's worth pointing out that life expectancy in the time these photos were taken was about 37, nearly tripling it

That's because of childhood diseases, it's not like old people didn't exist. These guys weren't looked at like Ents.
posted by leotrotsky at 5:25 AM on June 7, 2017 [21 favorites]

To be fair they sort of do look like Ents.
posted by saturday_morning at 6:11 AM on June 7, 2017 [17 favorites]

These remind me of old photos of plains Indians. Long white hair, dark, weathered skin, grumpy expressions.
posted by Bee'sWing at 6:18 AM on June 7, 2017 [2 favorites]

Yeah, looking at life expectancy for a white male of age 40 in 1850, it's around 28 more years- so 68. Today it's around 38 more years.

Although honestly the story I want to know is what was going through the photographers' heads in 1864; why do this during the Civil War?
posted by nat at 6:23 AM on June 7, 2017 [1 favorite]

Wow! That's impressive.
posted by rmd1023 at 6:27 AM on June 7, 2017 [1 favorite]

I always got the impression that so many photos in general were taken during and of the war because Mathew Brady and his colleagues were excited by the possibilities of using the relatively new medium to document it. (Brady was so excited, in fact, that he spent over $100,000 (over $2.5 million in today's dollars) of his own money taking about ten thousand pictures of the war, and went bankrupt when the federal government, contrary to his expectations, wouldn't recompensate him for them; he died penniless.) I think that it's likely that, in the process of taking the pictures of countless infantrymen, someone realized that some Revolutionary War soldiers were still alive.
posted by Halloween Jack at 6:32 AM on June 7, 2017 [3 favorites]

Although honestly the story I want to know is what was going through the photographers' heads in 1864; why do this during the Civil War?

There are wide swaths of society (geographically as well as demographically) that aren't directly affected by nearly any war, especially back then. Two of those swaths in the American Civil War were "old men" and "New England".
posted by Etrigan at 6:46 AM on June 7, 2017 [2 favorites]

For really, really old fellows, most of them look pretty good and still have their hair.

Well, yeah, the sickly old folks you see that are still alive today, back then would have just died.

Broken hip? Dead. Congestive Heart Failure? Dead (sooner). Liver Disease? Dead.
posted by leotrotsky at 6:48 AM on June 7, 2017

Wow, George Fishley hadn't even gone gray. These men must have had exceptionally strong constitutions to survive a war and then go on to live another 80 years.
posted by Beethoven's Sith at 7:16 AM on June 7, 2017

Also, male pattern baldness is linked with higher levels of testosterone, which in turn is linked with higher risks of prostate cancer and heart disease. Might explain why the folks that aren't dead still have hair.
posted by leotrotsky at 7:27 AM on June 7, 2017 [1 favorite]

From the link given by ideefixe: "It is told of Fishley that when Adams and Jefferson were buried in 1826, and a procession was contemplated in Portsmouth, of which the Revolutionary heroes were to form a part, the committee came to Fishley requesting him to appear. He asked who were to be there. All were named until ----- was mentioned. 'What,' cried the old man. 'He a patriot! Why he was a d--- Hessian, and came over here to fight us for six pence a day. No s-i-r, I don’t ride with such patriots as he!' And ride he did not on the solemn occasion."

To look at a picture of a fellow who said this, who lies underneath a weathered and barely readable tombstone of the kind you trip over in New England -- it's as good of a time machine as you're going to get.

Adam Link does have an awfully twinkly look about him. The Rev. Levi Hayes, on the other hand, appears ready to beat somebody with his Bible or his walking stick with equal ferocity. Whether this was really true, of course, is impossible to say. We all photograph badly sometimes. You can see that the spine of the book shifted a little while he had to hold his pose, giving a ghostly impression of a completely forgotten moment.
posted by Countess Elena at 9:06 AM on June 7, 2017 [4 favorites]

It does have to be said that these are some pretty Revolutionary War looking dudes.

I know a lot of old men like to argue that their sole purpose in life is not to be decorative but I think all of them should dress this way if they live long enough. it's a good look. a respectable man has a minimum of four layers of fabric between himself and the elements at all times. what is the point of brushing out your long beautiful white hair if you haven't got a neckerchief on to finish framing the face? none that i can see. not unless you got a long beautiful white beard to take its place and that is not a very Revolutionary look in my opinion. not unless you wrap it gracefully around your throat and tie it in a complicated knot.
posted by queenofbithynia at 9:41 AM on June 7, 2017 [3 favorites]

James W. Heard looks as though he might be blind, and Dr. Eneas Munson looks a bit like President Francis Underwood. Fishley wins, though, because of the bicorn.
posted by scratch at 12:24 PM on June 7, 2017

These are so neat, and I'm struck by how it's such a cross-centuries project. I'm glad for the Civil War era photographers who thought to photograph and interview those last six men, as well as the 1970s reporter who went searching for and researching the subjects of other photographs. It's a nice preservation of history, one that really brings a sense of these long, connective spans of time. (And also I'm obviously grateful to the men themselves for the revolution and also sitting for these, as I am getting antsy just thinking of having to sit still for early photography.)
posted by mixedmetaphors at 7:12 PM on June 7, 2017 [2 favorites]