American Historical Ephemera and Early Photography

Cabinet card credited to D. F. Barry on verso and with ink inscription reading, "Gen. Custer. Officers and their wives" beneath image (minor stray marks, soiling, and toning to print; mount with light soiling and wear to edges/corners). This image was originally captured by Orlando S. Goff and printed thereafter.

This wonderfully illustrative portrait features Custer as a lieutenant colonel, sitting with one leg crossed over the other and with his head tilted in apparent acknowledgement of the camera. He is among several officers, their wives (including his own), and friends. Some subjects look at the camera while other pose in profile, and one woman (Miss Emily Watson) holds a fan in coquettish concealment of half of her face.

Subjects pictured, from left to right: Lieutenant James Calhoun; Mr. Leonard Swett; Captain Stephen Baker, 6th US Infantry; Boston Custer; 2nd Lieutenant Winfield S. Edgerly; Miss Emily Watson; Captain Myles W. Keogh; Mrs. Margaret Custer Calhoun; Mrs. Elizabeth B. Custer; Dr. Holmes O. Paulding; Lieutenant Colonel George A. Custer; Mrs. Nettie Smith; Dr. George E. Lord; Captain Thomas B. Weir; 1st Lieutenant William W. Cooke; 2nd Lieutenant Richard E. Thompson, 6th US Infantry; Miss Nellie Wadsworth; Miss Emma Wadsworth; 1st Lieutenant Thomas W. Custer; 1st Lieutenant Algernon E. Smith.

Notable for many reasons, this image features all three Custer brothers who lost their lives nearly one year later on the Little Bighorn battlefield.

 Catalogued in Katz, Custer in Photographs [K-140].