Name/Title
Captain Samuel Myers DealEntry/Object ID
2019.1.1Description
Black and white photograph of a mounted soldier on a horse. The soldier is in uniform with a hat and sword. The brown horse wears a a blanket with the number "2" on the rear. The back of the image reads "Samuel M. Deal, Capt. & Surg, 2nd SC Inf. Columbia, SC, Aug 1904"Photograph Details
Subject Place
City
Columbia, South CarolinaContext
Samuel Myers Deal (1874-1907) was a graduate of The Citadel in Charleston, South Carolina, and a resident of Columbia from 1900 until 1907. He married Mary Davis (1876-1941) in April 1904, just a few months before this photograph was taken. He was a captain in the Governor's Guard from 1901 until 1907, when he was forced into resigning due to ill health.
Deal practiced medicine in partnership with Dr. Robert W. Gibbes (1872-1956) for the short time he was in Columbia; obituaries note that Deal's illness was "the dread disease" contracted from one of his patients—likely tuberculosis. Despite moving to Asheville, North Carolina, and then New Mexico and Pasadena, California, with his wife and daughter in an attempt to regain his health, Deal returned to his childhood home in Blacksburg, South Carolina, where he died two days later at the age of 33.Inscription/Signature/Marks
Type
InscriptionLocation
BackTranscription
Samuel M. Deal, Capt. & Surg, 2nd SC Inf. Columbia, SC, Aug 1904Material/Technique
Pen
