Civil War Oddities #31

Eight Federal generals came from the small town of Galena, Illinois (15,000 population). They probably owed their rank to their friendship with U. S. Grant, the most celebrated wartime citizen of the place.

The list included John Aaron Rawlins, who was Grant’s chief of staff; the Seneca Chief, Ely S. Parker, an engineer who became Grant’s secretary and postwar commissioner of Indian Affairs, Jasper Maltby, a gunsmith said to have been the inventor of a telescopic sight; and Augustus L. Chetlain, a storekeeper who became Consul to Brussels and a leading Chicago banker.

Civil War Oddities #30

Joseph E. Johnston, the “dean” of Confederate generals, who was jealous of his seniority, lost his hair from an illness, and wore a hat at table during the war, to the undisguised amusement of his servants.

Under the terms of Johnston’s surrender at Sherman near Durham, North Carolina, many more men were surrendered than Lee gave up at Appomattox.

In postwar years Johnston served as pallbearer for several prominent Union generals, including U.S. Grant. His last such service was for William T. Sherman, his conqueror. While paying his respects to Sherman in the cemetery on a raw winter day, Johnston contracted a severe cold which became pneumonia and caused his death.

Civil War Oddities #29

The first Confederate general to be killed was Robert S. Garnett, shot at Corrick’s Ford, Virginia, before the first battle of Manassas/ Bull Run. He was first buried in Baltimore, and then secretly moved to a Brooklyn cemetery plot beside his wife. The family, because of strong wartime sectional feeling, did not reveal his identity. His resting place remained generally unknown until 1959.

The youngest Confederate general was William Paul Roberts of North Carolina, a cavalry commander who went to war at twenty. His claim to the title has been established only recently through a study of vital statistics.

Of the 435 Confederate generals, 77 were killed or died of wounds during the war. The last surviving lieutenant general of the Southern armies was Simon Bolivar Buckner, who lived until 1914; his son and namesake was killed as a general in World War II.

Civil War Oddities #28

After the war many Confederate officers fled to foreign countries rather than live in the reunited republic; some 3,000 went to Brazil alone, in an ill-fated effort to build a prosperous new life.

A striking contrast was the North Carolinian, Dick Ragland, a man of a wealth plantation family who swore an oath, upon hearing of Lee’s surrender, that he would not life a finger to work so long as he lived.

Ragland also vowed that he would never cross to the north side of the Potomac, or stray south of Atlanta, Georgia. Until after 1910 he tramped the South as a vagrant, shaggy and ragged, with a pack on his back, carrying a long stick with a bayonet fixed on its end.

Civil War Oddities #27

Years before the war Jesse Grant, father of Ulysses, lived and worked in the home of Owen Brown, whose small son, playing noisily about the frontier homestead, grew up to be John Brown, the Abolitionist martyr who lit the fuse of the Civil War.

The End of an Era: Kodak to Stop Making Cameras

Say it isn't so! Will there never be another "Kodak Moment?"

Eastman Kodak Co, the inventor of the digital camera, plans to get out of the camera business in the first half of this year as the bankrupt company looks to cut costs.

Kodak will stop selling digital cameras along with pocket video cameras and digital picture frames. It also will stop making film. However, that won't make much of a difference as the sale of film has become almost non-existent in recent years. The cost of keeping the film factories open probably exceeds the revenue produced by dwindling sales.

Want to buy some microfilm so that your society can create microfilms of old records? Sorry, Kodak won't be selling any. In fact, almost all of Kodak's competitors have also stopped making microfilm. Kodak pioneered microfilm to image checks in the 1920s and continued to develop the technology for decades. Although once a leader in the field of microimaging, Kodak suffered financially as sales of microfilm and associated hardware slowed to a trickle, only to be replaced by cheaper digital technologies. Now all manufacture of microfilm has ceased.

Kodak filed for bankruptcy protection last month and management has now announced a reorganization in order to save the company. The latest announcement states that getting out of cameras will result in "significant" job losses. Most of the 400 people in that business are based in Rochester, New York, and work in research and development and marketing.

Kodak once employed more than 60,000 people. That number now is believed to be about 18,000 and undoubtedly will drop further as the bankruptcy reorganization plans are put into place.

Instead of designing its own cameras, Kodak will now try to license its brand to other camera makers. You might see the Kodak name in the future but the digital cameras will not be designed, manufactured, or sold by Eastman Kodak.

The company plans to focus on manufacturing its profitable digital printers.

Kodak cameras once included the Brownie which cost $1 when it was introduced in 1900. The Brownie was updated every few years and remained popular for more than 60 years. I still have the Brownie I had as a child, although film has not been available for several years. In 1963, Kodak introduced the Instamatic, another very popular product.

A Kodak camera was used on the Apollo 11 mission in 1969. NASA said that a Kodak camera was used by the astronauts to film lunar soil from only inches away.

Kodak film has been used on 80 movies that have won Best Picture Oscars, according to the company.

Kodak now depends on digital technology for three-quarters of its revenue.

Of course, the demise of photography and microfilm at Kodak isn't new. The same thing happened at Polaroid a few years ago. Almost all other film and microfilm companies have abandoned their older film products and have either gone bankrupt or have switched to digital products.

Civil War Oddities #26

There was an Abraham Lincoln on each side in the war. The President, and a Confederate, Private Abraham Lincoln of Company F, 1^st Virginia Cavalry, from Jefferson County. He was reported as a deserter in 1864, so the North ended with both.