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Lot 365

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Cased Full Plate Ivorytypes of General Marcellus H

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Cased Full Plate Ivorytypes of General Marcellus Holter & Wife, Ohio, circa 1863. Superb examples of an obscure and commercially limited process that, because of its expense, saw little use outside of a handful of major cities in the east. These are salted paper photographs, hand-colored with an added paper backing. Ezekial Hawkins, a pioneer photographer in Cincinnati, advertised this process, and, given the subject, it is possible that these were manufactured in the Queen City.

The officer is brevet Brigadier General Marcellus John Wesley Holter who served in three Ohio regiments during the war including the three-month 22nd, the 59th, where he was Lieutenant & Adjutant, and finally in 1865 the 195th OVI in which Holter was Colonel. He was brevetted Brig. General on March 13, 1865 and finally mustered out with the 195th after garrison duty in Alexandria, Virginia. The 59th had fought at Shiloh, Corinth, and Stones' River where Holter is mentioned in the O.R.'s, through Tennessee to Chickamauga and Knoxville and afterwards Atlanta, depleted and mustering out in October 1864. After the war Holter returned to teaching and later worked as government revenue official. He died in Ohio in 1913.
These same images sold in Cowan's Historical Americana, November 6, 1996.
The plates are meticulously detailed and in EXC condition except for uniform yellowing in the field caused by age and oxidation. The wonderful Holter portraits are identically matted in the professionally restored original full black leather push button case.

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