[Civil War veterans of the 29th Pennsylvania Infantry Regiment at monument dedication at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania]

Archive record

1 photograph : albumen print ; sheet 188 x 448 mm | Photograph shows group portrait of Union veterans.

About this photograph

This albumen print shows Union veterans of the 29th Pennsylvania Infantry Regiment gathered at Gettysburg for a monument dedication in 1889.

By this date, twenty-six years after the battle, such reunions had become regular occasions for former soldiers to meet, remember their service, and mark the ground where their units had fought. The veterans appear in a group portrait, a format that documentary photography could manage easily by the late 1880s, though action scenes had remained impossible during the war itself due to long exposure times.

The photographer William H. Tipton recorded the gathering. The 29th Pennsylvania had fought at Gettysburg in July 1863 as part of the Union army, and survivors returned in later years as the battlefield became a site of commemoration and monument building. Veterans' organisations held encampments and dedication ceremonies throughout the postwar decades, preserving the memory of their regiments and the men who had served in them.

The image captures a moment common to the era: aging soldiers standing together at the place where they had fought as young men, their reunion both a social gathering and an act of remembrance.

Compiled from the catalogue record and reference notes on the formats and events involved. The archive record above is the primary source.

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