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Tip: Finding Women in Civil War Photos

Did you know that you can find photos of women in Fold3’s collections Civil War Photos and Brady Civil War Photos?

While it’s true that these collections are composed predominately of photos of men, there are numerous photos of women if you know how to look. One way to look is by simply browsing, but as it can take quite some time to go through the collections photo by photo, a faster way is to search, limiting your results to the Civil War photo collections.

If you know the name of a specific woman you want to look for, you can try searching the Civil War photo collections for the woman’s name, keeping in mind that many of the portraits of women are identified with their last names (e.g., “Mrs. Furnace“) or initials and last names (e.g., “Mrs. H. S. O’ Hare“). Because of this, it may be helpful to search using the last name only. Searching by last name will also allow you to find photographs that are titled with the husband’s name.

Some portraits are titled on Fold3 as wholly or partially “illegible.” However, many of these have been annotated with the person’s name by Fold3 users and are therefore still searchable.

If you’re interested in seeing photos of Civil War women in general, try searching the Civil War photo collections for terms such as “Mrs.” and “Miss,” as well as “wife,” “daughter,” and “family.” You can also search for terms associated with women’s roles during the war, such as “hospital” and “sanitary commission.” For photos of African American women, try searching terms like “slave,” “contraband,” or other related terms.

The following are examples of portraits of Civil War women that you can find on Fold3:

Have you found any interesting photos of women on Fold3? Tell us about it! In addition to searching the Civil War Photos and Brady Civil War Photos, you might also find a few photos of women during the Civil War in the New York State Military Museum Photos or the Civil War Horse Soldier Artifacts Collection.

4 Comments

  1. Has anyone else complained about not being able to print out the images, i.e. military forms, from your site? Maybe this is because of the new viewer, but if I try to view a form in “Print Preview” it is always to the right side and partially cut off or only shows/prints the upper left corner of the form/image. I like the old viewer much better. Is there a way that I can go back to using the old viewer?

  2. Alan Trachtenberg says:

    At the upper right of the keyboard is a key marked “PrtScn/SysRq”. Pressing this key copies whatever is on your monitor screen to the Windows Clipboard, This image can be pasted into any program for images.

    In Windows (all versions), pressing Start, Programs, Accessories should show a menu that includes “Paint”.

    Click on Paint.

    “Paste” is at the upper left of the screen. Then click on the blue box above it, which opens a menu that includes “Print”.

    This should enable you to print the forms.

  3. Avez des photos de Mme PLISKA Valéria ?

    merci de votre célérité

    Je suis en France et cette personne malheureusement décédée à ce jour,

    fait partie de notre arbre généalogique et ses fils aimeraient connaître sa vie après son départ de France vers leS USA

    merci de votre aide

    Thierry LEPETIT ROGERVILLE FRANCE