His unit was deduced because his get-up exactly matched that in another picture of a soldier from Berkeley Troop, the experts said.
But Thatcher’s name remained elusive.
Civil War 150
Liljenquist, of McLean, said he bought the picture years ago at a Civil War show, probably in Virginia. “It’s a well-known photograph,” he said. “It’s been published in a few books.” But no name was associated with it.
David Thatcher, it turns out, served in a storied unit that was originally commanded by the South’s legendary cavalry general J.E.B. Stuart.
David Thatcher was wounded Oct. 19, 1863, in the Battle of Buckland Mills, which was such a complete Confederate victory that the rebels called it “the Buckland Races.” He died the next day, acccording to Johnson’s research.
His tombstone reads:
When thou goest out to battle
against thine enemies, be not
afraid of them, for the Lord
thy God is with thee.
Karen Thatcher said that the Civil War is still “close” in her area and that her family, with deep roots there, has long known of the story.
“If you have a family member who dies at the age of 19 in the Civil War, everyone knows that,” she said. “And this picture was just always in the family. And so you just knew that that’s who it was.”
“My husband jokingly calls him ‘Uncle Dave,’ ” she said of the soldier, who was three generations removed — a brother of her husband’s great-grandfather.
She said she and her husband have a small prewar photograph of David Thatcher in civilian clothes attached to a certificate honoring his memory. That photo, too, resembles the other images.
She said their “crayon enlargement” was a copy of one that had been in her husband’s household when he grew up and was passed down to one of his nieces.
“It looks like a drawing of a photograph,” she said.
A history lover, Karen Thatcher said she opened The Post’s Civil War section, and staring back was an identical copy of the picture that the niece had given them.
“Except, I could tell that it was a photograph . . . not a drawing of a photograph. I thought, ‘Son of a gun.’ I thought, ‘Gee whiz.’ I thought, ‘Isn’t this amazing?’ ”
She said she went to the library’s online gallery, and “there’s Uncle Dave.”
She called the Library of Congress on Monday morning.
The library said Friday that it had already changed its master catalogue to add Thatcher’s name to the the picture’s description, and remove the word “unidentified.”
The library said it would make the change to its online gallery next week.
Read more of The Washington Post’s Civil War coverage:
The Monitor’s enduring fascination
Second Manassas showed how bloody war would be
Civil War blog: A House Divided
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