CIVIL WAR MUSEUM
of Philadelphia

The Meade Album holds almost 1,400 carte-de-visite portraits of all the officers who served in the Army of the Potomac, the major Union army famous for fighting under General George G. Meade in the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863.  According to Andrew Coldren, Curator at the Civil War Museum of Philadelphia, the famous General Meade did not create the album (a common misconception); it was assembled by his son, also named George, who served on the General’s staff during the war. 

Collecting cartes was a popular pastime among Civil War officers, and George probably began gathering these images during the war and then worked throughout his life to complete the album, using his father’s connections to locate veterans or find information.  Underneath or next to each portrait are what Andrew believes must be George’s handwritten notes, which include the officer’s name and rank and indicate whether he was injured or killed in battle.  Toward the back of one volume, George began to add cartes of Confederate officers.  These portraits were most likely collected after the war’s end, when soldiers from both sides networked and held reunions.

George, a member of the Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States (the organization that founded the Civil War Museum of Philadelphia in 1888), eventually gave the Meade Album to the Museum, along with other family items.  When the album arrived at the Conservation Center for Art & Historic Artifacts (CCAHA) earlier this year to receive treatment through a Save America’s Treasures grant, many of the cartes were faded and yellowed.  Mellon Fellow Jessica Keister surface cleaned the album pages and removed old tapes.  After mending breaks in the pages and consolidating several fragile photographs, she used watercolors to inpaint losses in the images.  Finally, Jessica placed each page in a paper folder for storage.

To reduce future handling of the pages, CCAHA’s Manager of Digital Documentation, Michelle Dauberman, photographed each one with a digital camera.  In the future, the Civil War Museum of Philadelphia hopes to make the resulting digital images available to the public on its website.  The Meade Album is the only source of images for many of the lesser-known officers in the Army of the Potomac, making it a valuable resource for Civil War researchers.

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In 2009, the Civil War Museum of Philadelphia began an extensive project to conserve material in the Museum’s collection thanks to a generous $150,000 grant from the federal “Save America’s Treasures” grant program along with matching funds from the William Penn Foundation. The two-year project will conserve and rehouse high priority items, including manuscripts, photographs, paintings, flags, uniforms, and weapons of the Union officers who founded the Museum in the 19th century.

Save America’s Treasures aims to preserve the important and irreplaceable physical reminders of America’s history, ensuring that future generations may learn from and enjoy them.  In awarding funds to the Civil War Museum of Philadelphia, the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) recognized the Museum’s collection of Civil War documents and artifacts as one of the finest in the country.

The Museum partnered with the Conservation Center for Art & Historic Artifacts to design and manage the project.  Treatment has been completed on the Tiffany-created sword presented to General Ulysses S. Grant by his officers after the Union victory at Vicksburg, along with its elegant ebony case; General George Gordon Meade’s topographical and presentation swords; and General John F. Reynolds’s sword belt.  Preservation of extraordinary first-person accounts of troop movements, battles, concerns about family and the home front, and trenchant observations of politics in the Union Army are captured in the newly conserved letters from Francis Adams Donaldson, the journals kept by Carlton Birch and the Maj. George Meade, Jr., Album of Union and Confederate Officers, the most complete photographic record of the Union army.  Treatment is currently underway on General Meade’s frock coat, slouch hat, and sash; on sashes that belonged to Grant and Reynolds; and on Confederate President Jefferson Davis’s smoking jacket.

Established by Executive Order in 1998, Save America’s Treasures is administered through a public-private partnership that includes the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the National Park Service, the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities, and the federal cultural agencies: IMLS, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.  Grants are awarded through a competitive process and require a dollar-for-dollar match.  IMLS is administering the grant for the Civil War Museum of Philadelphia; click here to read IMLS’s press release for the award announcement.