Twenty-five years ago, I held a daguerreotype in my hands and thought, “This man is old enough to have witnessed the American Revolution.”

The owner of the image confirmed that it was his ancestor, a Loyalist sympathizer.

That moment changed the course of my research.

What followed became The Last Muster Project, resulting in two books, an exhibit at the Concord Museum in Concord, Massachusetts, and inspiration for the final display at the Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia. It also led to three documentary films, including A Revolutionary Trio, produced by Verissima Productions, featuring Eleazer Blake of New Hampshire, Agrippa Hull of Stockbridge, Massachusetts, and Molly Ferris Akin of New York.

Over the years, I’ve written articles, given presentations, and spent countless hours searching for photographs of the men and women whose lives bridged the Revolutionary era and the dawn of photography.

Did I find all of them? Absolutely not.

In fact, I know there are many more images waiting to be discovered.

How do I know? Because readers, museum curators, librarians, and family historians continue to send me photographs and leads. Eric Grundset, formerly of the Library of the Daughters of the American Revolution, has been one of the most dedicated contributors. New discoveries continue to surface as collections are digitized, archives are opened, and families begin exploring boxes of inherited photographs.

The greatest challenge is not finding photographs. It’s identifying them.

Across the country, there are daguerreotypes without names, carte de visite portraits without labels, and family collections that have lost the stories behind the faces.

So how do you spot someone connected to the Revolutionary era in your own collection?

Start with the basics:

• A very elderly person in a case photograph, such as a daguerreotype, ambrotype, or tintype.
• A very elderly person in an early carte de visite.
• Family stories suggesting Revolutionary War service.
• Photographs linked to families known to have lived in America before 1800.

Of course, age alone isn’t proof.

The next step is verification. Is the person depicted a veteran, actually? A veteran’s wife? One of their children? That’s where research becomes both challenging and rewarding.

I rely on timelines to separate fact from family legend. Pension applications, military records, census schedules, probate files, and local histories can reveal remarkable—and sometimes heartbreaking—stories.

Occasionally, a photograph can even be matched to an earlier painting, engraving, or silhouette. What is unidentified in one collection may be fully documented in another.

Am I still looking?

Absolutely.

Will there be a third volume of The Last Muster?

I’m not sure.

At the moment, I don’t have enough newly identified likenesses to support another book, and publishing a volume would require starting the proposal process from scratch. The first volume took nearly a decade from proposal to publication.

As we commemorate the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States, I find myself thinking about these men and women who witnessed the nation’s birth and lived long enough to see an entirely new age emerge. Their photographs connect us to history in a uniquely personal way.

Every identified face adds another piece to the story.

And somewhere, in an archive, museum, library, or family collection, there are undoubtedly more waiting to be found.

The Last Muster volumes are available through Amazon.

The post Looking for Faces of the American Revolution appeared first on Maureen Taylor.

He felt that history of the American Revolution was being forgotten even by individuals living in towns with key roles in the conflict. With the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Battle of Lexington and Concord approaching in 1850, there was increasing interest in documenting that war. Lossing wanted his book to be different than those currently for sale. Not naming titles or authors, he criticized them by saying “the woof of our history is too sacred to be interwoven with the tinsel filling of fiction.” He wasn’t content to use just second hand sources. He began collecting rare books and manuscripts to further his research. He kept them all in a specially constructed fire-proof building on the property of his house.

Rather than a chronological approach he sought to visit each site to view the landscape, document remnants of the war and to seek out individuals who’d lived during the conflict.  His eight thousand mile journey through all thirteen colonies and parts of Canada brought him into contact with remnants of the American Revolution. He saw “half hidden mounds of old redoubts; the ruined walls of some stronger fortification; dilapidated buildings, neglected and decaying herein patriots met for shelter or in council ; and living men, who had borne the musket and knapsack day after day in that conflict, occasionally passed under the ye of my casual apprehension.”

Harper’s New Monthly Magazine gave him a monetary advance to pursue his  project and published the first installment of the Pictorial Field- book in 1850; the first edition of the book appeared in 1853. It brought him critical success. In an article in the Boston Recorder of October 5, 1854, the Literary Gazette called him “an accomplished artist and an elegant writer.” The combination of historical narrative, travelogue and personal memoir made his books popular and widely read. At the time he was considered one of America’s finest historians, a trendsetter in the genre of historical writing. Within a decade, he’d written and published similar titles on the War of 1812 and the Civil War (of which Mathew Brady contributed photographs) using the same approach as his two volume set on the American Revolution.

Not willing to include illustrations merely to embellish the text, he sought to truthfully represent the places he visited. Together with William Barrit, the pair used paintings and photographs to place living people or historical figures in the text, recreated historical scenes as well as maps and drew from life.  He portrayed the ferryman, Mr. Tenyck who led him across Verplanck’s Point, a path followed by General George Washington on his march to Yorktown.

In small towns and hamlets he met veterans who recounted their wartime experiences. At Fort Ticonderoga, he met Isaac Rice who regaled him with stories and who supported himself giving tours of the fort. Each place and personal meeting inspired Lossing to continue his quest to locate bits of Revolutionary War history no matter how small.

Lossing wrote until a year before his death in 1891. His Field-book of the American Revolution remains important more than a century and a half after publication. His treasured collection is owned by various institutions such as the New York State Library, Vassar College, Syracuse University, the Clements Library and Princeton.

I have put together a free download of 5 Revolutionary War-Related Activities that you can explore. Click the button below to get your copy.

Download “5 Revolutionary War-Related Activities”

You can buy your copy of The Last Muster books by clicking here.

The post An Inspirational Man–Benson J. Lossing appeared first on Maureen Taylor.