Early Maine Photography

In the Vickery-Shettleworth Collection, the images of two aged Revolutionary War veterans are contrasted with those of several young men who served in the Civil War. Simon Dearborn of Monmouth joined the staff of his illustrious uncle, General Henry Dearborn, in his teens and witnessed many of the events of the American Revolution, including Valley Forge, the Battle of Monmouth, and Cornwallis’s Surrender at Yorktown. When Ralph Farnham of Acton was eighteen years old, he fought in the Battle of Bunker Hill and lived to be its sole survivor, dying at 105 in 1860.

As the last veterans of the Revolution passed away, more than 70,000 men from Maine fought in the Civil War to preserve the Union and end slavery. Their numbers are represented by three earnest young faces. At the age of eighteen, James Davis left his family farm in Plymouth to join Company I of the Ninth Maine Regiment. Private Davis served from September, 1861 to September, 1864. Private Charles H. Ring, an eighteen year old carriage trimmer from Newport, enlisted as a musician in Company E of the Sixteenth Maine Regiment on August 14, 1862, and died of disease in Maryland three and a half months later.