Name/Title
George T. Dickey PortraitEntry/Object ID
1968. 532.1Description
George T. Dickey was born in Weston, married Rebecca Jane Ingersoll of Windham, Maine, and had three children. He enlisted in June 1861, answering the call to preserve the Union. Nine months later, he was dead, not from battle, but from measles and pneumonia.
This painted portrait shows Dickey in full Union blue, rifle in hand, "US" buckle at his waist, standing before a camp tent with a fire burning in the background. His blue uniform may have come from nearby Saxonville, where Michael Hodge Simpson's mills produced blue kersey cloth and blankets for the Union Army throughout the war. Simpson later married Evangeline Marrs from the Dudley Pond area of Wayland, a reminder of how tightly these communities were woven together. But portraits like this were often made from photographs, sometimes painted after a soldier's death, transforming a grainy likeness into something for the family to keep. The painting gives us the uniform, the posture, the ideal. It doesn't show the crowded camps where disease spread, or does it?
Disease killed more Civil War soldiers than bullets did. Of the estimated 750,000 military deaths, roughly two-thirds died from illness. Measles alone infected over 76,000 soldiers, killing more than 5,000—Dickey among them. He left behind a widow and three children. How do we reflect on thte individual and collective cost of war? A portrait preserves one moment. What happens to all the moments it cannot hold?
(https://www.pbs.org/mercy-street/uncover-history/behind-lens/disease/). Dickey among them. What can we learn from this portrait?
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George T. Dickey (Civil War soldier) (1825-1862)
Born Weston MA
Married Rebecca Jane Ingersoll of Windham, ME, 1851; 3 children
Enlisted for service in Civil War 6/29/1861
Died as a result of measles and pneumonia 3/3/1862Cataloged By
Goeselt, JoRelationships
Related Person or Organization
Person or Organization
Dickey, George T.General Notes
Note
Notes: No Accession file has been found for this item. It has been given an arbitrary Object ID number.
Portrait donor believed to be his grandson, George T. Dickey (per note in Portrait
Subject file (by Emily Blair?)).
Status: OK
Status By: Sciacca, Jane
Status Date: 2016-03-01