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Photograph of Mary Lincoln in 1863
PhysLinc #
Synonyms
 
 M63c1
 
 
 22
 
 
 M63cza
 
The Image
Photographer:  Brady
Sitting date: 1863-03-27
Location: Washington, DC
Technique: Photograph
     

b&w film copy neg.

x for detail view shown.
 
x for detail view shown.
 
 

From the Library of Congress web site, which then, at length, quotes Diplomats in Buckskin (p. 101) by Herman J. Viola:

"In the White House Conservatory during the Civil War, J.G. Nicolay, back center"

"Photograph of the Southern Plains delegation, taken in the White House Conservatory on March 27, 1863. The interpreter William Simpson Smith and the agent Samuel G. Colley are standing at the left of the group; the white woman standing at the far right is often identified as Mary Todd Lincoln. The Indians in the front row are, left to right: War Bonnet, Standing in the Water, and Lean Bear of the Cheyennes, and Yellow Wolf of the Kiowas. Yellow Wolf is wearing the Thomas Jefferson peace medal that aroused such interest. The identities of the Indians of the second row are unknown.

"Within eighteen months from the date of this sitting, all four men in the front row were dead. Yellow Wolf died of pneumonia a few days after the picture was taken; War Bonnet and Standing in the Water died in the Sand Creek Massacre; and Lean Bear was killed by toops from Colorado Territory who mistook him for a hostile."

If this is Mary Lincoln, she looks more weathered than in her posed studio portraits. She also looks taller than Mary's supposed height of about 5 feet 3 inches, especially compared to John Nicolay, and to the men at the far left of the photograph.
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