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Grand Army of the Republic Reunion Photograph, n.d., Accession #11436, Special Collections Department, University of Virginia Library, Charlottesville, Va.
The Library purchased this photograph from Bookseller Jerry Showalter, Rare Books and Autographs, Ivy, Virginia on September 28, 1998.
This item, a 9.5 x 7.5 inch black and white mounted
photograph, ca. 1910, is of African-Americans at a reunion of
Grand Army of the Republic (G. A. R.), in Norfolk, Virginia.
It is believed photographer H. (Harry) C. Mann took it at
Elmwood Cemetery. (In 1920, in the black section of the city's
West Point Cemetery [now Elmwood], black Norfolkians dedicated
a monument featuring a life-sized black Union soldier in
remembrance of African-American soldiers and seamen. It
remains the only black Civil War soldiers' monument in the
South and bears the inscription, "To The Memory of Our
Heroes.") Forty-one individuals, mostly veterans of black
Union regiments recruited in the area during the Civil War,
dressed in G.A.R. uniforms and insignia or civilian clothes,
are present.
The first soldier on the left front row (wearing officers' bars, gauntlets and carrying a sword) may be wearing a Spanish-American War veteran's officer's uniform. According to a lithograph broadside, "Soldier's Memorial/Spanish-American War of 1898" by F. A. Neubauer of Cincinnati, Ohio, and a Jones family tradition, this soldier may be Kinchen Jones, who served as a wagoner in Company D, 6th Virginia Volunteer Infantry Regiment (Sixth Virginia Volunteers), mustered into federal service at Norfolk on August 4, 1898. It is also believed one of the elderly veterans in the photograph is Kinchen Jones' father (front row, third from left, with a white moustache; front row, second from right, with white moustache and goatee, or, second row, fourth from right, with a white moustache, goatee and bow tie).
Under limited digital scanning/enhancement Jones's collar
bears the insignia "9th Va." However, published references
concerning a black Virginia military unit with this
designation have not been found. Another possibility is that
he is wearing a G. A. R. uniform and "9th Va." designates a
specific G. A. R. post in the Hampton Roads area. G. A. R.
posts were racially segregated and often this veterans'
organization did not permit blacks to join or participate in
its activities, especially in the South. According to a 1900
Norfolk directory, there were three black posts in the city:
Cailloux Post No. 2, Dalhgren [Dahlgren] Post No. 4, Shaw Post
No. 5, and, an "Armory." Digital enhancement of the hats of
two veterans suggests they were members of Dalhgren [Dahlgren]
Post No. 4 (front row, second and sixth from left).
Taken in Norfolk, probably Elmwood Cemetery.