Alexander Gardner

• Name — Alexander Gardner • Born — 17 October 1821 • Birthplace — Paisley, Renfrewshire, Scotland • Died — 10 December 1882 • Place of death — Washington, D.C., U.S. • Resting Place — Glenwood Cemetery • Citizenship — United Kingdom, United States • Occupation — Photographer • Spouse — Margaret Gardner • Children — 2

Alexander was born in Paisley, Renfrewshire, on October 17, 1821. He became an apprentice jeweler at the age of 14, lasting seven years. Gardner was raised in the Church of Scotland and influenced by the work of Robert Owen, Welsh socialist and father of the cooperative movement. By adulthood he desired to create a cooperative community in the United States that would incorporate socialist values. In 1850, Gardner and others purchased land near Monona, Iowa for this purpose, but Gardner never lived there, choosing to return to Scotland to raise more money. He stayed there until 1856, becoming owner and editor of the Glasgow Sentinel in 1851. Visiting The Great Exhibition in 1851 in Hyde Park, London, he saw the photography of American Mathew Brady, and thus began his interest in the field. In 1856, Gardner and his family immigrated to the United States. Finding that many family members and friends at the cooperative he had helped to form were dead or dying of tuberculosis, he stayed in New York. Gardner initiated contact with Brady and became an assistant to him that year, continuing until 1862. At first, Gardner specialized in making large photographic prints, called Imperial photographs, but as Brady's eyesight began to fail, Gardner assuming increasing responsibilities in Brady's studio. In 1858, Brady put Gardner in charge of his Washington, D.C. gallery.

After the war, Gardner was commissioned to photograph Native Americans who came to Washington to discuss treaties; and he surveyed the proposed route of the Kansas Pacific railroad to the Pacific Ocean. Many of his photos were stereoscopic. After 1871, Gardner gave up photography and helped to found an insurance company. Gardner stayed in Washington until his death. When asked about his work, he said, "It is designed to speak for itself. As mementos of the fearful struggle through which the country has just passed, it is confidently hoped that it will possess an enduring interest." He became sick in the late fall of 1882 and died shortly afterward on December 10, 1882, at his home in Washington, D.C. He was survived by his wife and two children. He was buried in local Glenwood Cemetery. In 1893, photographer J. Watson Porter, who had worked for Gardner years before, tracked down hundreds of glass negatives made by Gardner, that had been left in an old house in Washington where Gardner had lived. The result was a story in the Washington Post and renewed interest in Gardner's photographs.

A century later, photographic analysis suggested that Gardner had manipulated the setting of at least one of his Civil War photos by moving a soldier's corpse and weapon into more dramatic positions. In 1961, Frederic Ray of the Civil War Times magazine compared several of Gardner's Gettysburg photos showing "two" dead Confederate snipers and realized that the same body had been photographed in two separate locations. One of his most famous images, Home of a Rebel Sharpshooter, has been argued to be a fabrication. This argument, first put forth by William Frassanito in 1975, goes this way: Gardner and his assistants Timothy O'Sullivan and James Gibson had dragged the sniper's body 40 yards into the more photogenic surroundings of the Devil's Den to create a better composition. Though Ray's analysis was that the same body was used in two photographs, Frassanito expanded on this analysis in his 1975 book Gettysburg: A Journey in Time, and acknowledged that the manipulation of photographic settings in the early years of photography was not frowned upon.

• Illustration — Gardner c. 1860 • Illustration — Dead Confederate artillery horses and dead Confederates • Illustration — Dead Confederate artillery horses • Illustration — Dead Confederates at the site of a Rebel Artillery Battery; Dunkard Church in background • Illustration — Confederate dead at Antietam 1862 north of the Dunker Church on the west side of the Hagerstown Pike • Illustration — Confederate dead near the Hagerstown Pike (Possibly based on the photograph to the immediate right.) • Illustration — Confederate Dead • Illustration — A Lonely Grave, Union Soldiers grave. • Illustration — Confederate dead at Antietam 1862. • Illustration — "Confederate soldier who after being wounded had evidently dragged himself to a little ravine on the hillside where he died". • Illustration — Confederate Dead Antietam Maryland 1862 incorrectly identified and sold as taken near "Burnsides Bridge"; • Illustration — Dead soldiers at Antietam Maryland 1862 incorrectly identified and sold as dead of the Irish Brigade; another version identifies the deceased as Confederates but at the wrong location; • Illustration — Dead Confederates in the "Bloody Lane" road. • Illustration — Dead Confederates in the "Bloody Lane" road. • Illustration — Dead Confederates in the "Bloody Lane" road. • Illustration — View on Battlefield" No 572 • Illustration — "Burying the Dead on the Battlefield of Antietam, September 1862" • Illustration — "Confederate Colonel and horse, both killed at the Battle of Antietam" • Illustration — "Dr. A. Hurd, 14th Indiana Volunteers, attending to Confederate wounded after the Battle of Antietam." • Illustration — Middle bridge over Antietam Creek, September 1862. • Illustration — Abraham Lincoln, Allan Pinkerton and John Alexander McClernand, visiting the Antietam battlefield, 1862. • Illustration — A Sharpshooter's Last sleep • Illustration — The home of a rebel sharpshooter, Gettysburg (1863) • Illustration — The "Gettysburg Portrait", A head-on photograph of Abraham Lincoln taken on November 8, 1863; eleven days before his Gettysburg Address. • Illustration — Cracked glass portrait of Abraham Lincoln, that was considered to be the last photograph taken of the president before his death. The photo was actually taken in February 1865. • Illustration — [Bottom] Harper's Weekly drawing showing autopsy of John Wilkes Booth on the USS Montauk (1862). (Based on a lost Alexander Gardner photograph (?)) • Illustration — David Herold, conspirator to assassination, after arrest, 1865. • Illustration — George Atzerodt, conspirator to assassination, after arrest, 1865. • Illustration — Lewis Powell, conspirator to assassination, after arrest, 1865. • Illustration — Gen. John F. Hartranft and staff, responsible for securing the conspirators at the arsenal • Illustration — The scaffold • Illustration — Execution of Mary Surratt, Lewis Powell, David Herold, and George Atzerodt-the Lincoln Assassination Conspirators; July 7, 1865 • Illustration — Reading the Warrant • Illustration — Adjusting the Ropes • Illustration — The trap is Sprung • Illustration — After Trap has been Sprung • Illustration — Conspirator's execution – bodies hanging from scaffold • Illustration — Graves for the Lincoln Assassination conspirators • Illustration — View of the scaffold and hanging bodies of the Lincoln Assassination conspirators taken from roof of the arsenal • Illustration — Masonic Conescecration of Solder Monument Gettysburg PA July 1865 (Made from Alexander garnder Photograph) • Illustration — Portrait of Ta-Tan-Kah-Sa-Pah (Black Bull), 1872

Brigadier General Gustavus A. Antietam Bridge, On the Sharpsburg and Boonsboro Turnpike, No.