Civil War Photo

My wife found this old photo at one of the estate sales she goes to and she said that it was called a calotype. It's appears to be thin paper laid onto a thicker card stock. My question is ; Was calotype widely used for civil war photographs? Thanks

 

Calotypes, also known as salted paper prints or salt prints, were an early process of printing photographs on paper. According to what I can see online, the use of salt prints declined after the mid-1850s. And of course the U.S. Civil War started several years after that. Albumen prints were much more popular by the time of the Civil War. However, this could well be a salt print, as far as I know. Some processes lingered on in use by some practitioners after they were less popular. Since your wife knows what calotypes were I imagine she is knowledgeable about antique photos.

Here is some information about that type of process, from the Graphics Atlas:
http://www.graphicsatlas.org/identification/?process_id=269

The above page has a great depth of information on how to identify that type of photograph. You can also look up albumen on that site to see the qualities of those.

You didn't mention the size of this. Generally the carte-de-visite size was the most popular in the 1860s (2.5" x 4"). -- That is the size of the entire card, not just the paper print.

 

Looks like the image was glued on top of whatever was originally on that cdv card.

 

Here's a little history on the photographer.
https://cabinetcardgallery.wordpress.com/2012/08/page/2/

--- Susan

 

Note that the card with the photographer's name says, negatives preserved. This brings up the distinct possibility that this could be a later reprint. It might help to see if you could find when his son joined the business.

 

According to the following link:

Tunis Bergen's Genealogies of the State of New York, a Record of Their Achievements..., Vol. 2, 1915, page 569.
Starts near the bottom of the left column at "(VI) Richard Donly"
https://books.google.com/books?id=wekpAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA569&lpg=PA569&dq=photographer+Fred+Crum,+watkins,+ny&source=bl&ots=-JFWMM6E7x&sig=GGy9PmiZzIwZDufiD5Ec5GOiGmk&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj109m9voTUAhVmslQKHeihC4IQ6AEILTAF#v=onepage&q=photographer Fred Crum, watkins, ny&f=false

R.D. (Richard Donly) Crum, born 1831 NYC, was wheelwright in Watkins, NY. In 1853 he took up photography because of ill health. He was a photographer for 50 years until he retired. In 1898 he and his family moved to NJ. He had 4 children, 3 girls and 1 son, Fred. Fred was born in 1858 in Watkins, NY. He was a photographer also.

The following has a R.L. Crum & Son:
"CRUM, R. L.
Crum, R. L. & Son, photographers, Watkins, NY (1890s-1905) cab image "

*and* a

"CRUM, RICHARD D.
Crum, Richard D., photographer, (Watkins) Dix, NY (1859) NY State Business Directory; R. D. Crum, R. D., photographer, Nearly opp. The Jefferson House, Watkins, NY (late 1860s) "Additional copies of this picture can be had at any time", cdv image; Richard D. Crum, photographist, Watkins, Dix, NY (1870) Sampson Davenport NY State Business Directory; R. D. Crum, photographer, Watkins, NY (1890s) cab image notched edge"

Need to scroll way down to the CRUM listings:
http://www.langdonroad.com/cri-to-cy

Sooooooo it appears there were 2 Crums in Watkins, NY each with a son who was a photographer - R.D. Crum and a R.L. Crum & Son!!! R.L with son were in Watkins, NY in 1890s-1905. According for the Genealogies of NY, R.D. Crum moved to NJ in 1898. Well... none of this really helps on dating this CDV.

--- Susan

 

And we are not even sure that it's a CDV, yet! The OP did not give dimensions of the photo.

That being said, the general look of it is a little more reflective of a CDV than of a cabinet photo. But I've seen cab card photos that looked like that also.

The "Negatives Preserved" was a very common type of statement to appear on both CDV and cabinet card photos. It appeared on the cards no matter whether the photos on the cards were "original" prints or later prints from the negative. So the presence of that statement doesn't indicate whether this was a reproduction or not. However, it serves as a reminder that any photos printed on paper that had negatives could be reproduced.

 

Oh, and another thing... I had been thinking this might actually be a later photo taken of an earlier photo that was in a case... like an ambrotype or a tintype. The original most likely would not be a daguerreotype, because they were pretty much never used by the time of the Civil War.

The things that make me think the original could be a cased photo are:
1) The angled corners at the edges of the image that are reminiscent of the edges of a mat in a cased photo.

2) In the lower right part of the photo there are some bright spots around his hand that remind me of mold defects that can appear on the glass covering old cased photos. Sometimes the defects even appear on the images themselves.