52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks - Week 31 - Oldest - Photo from the 1860s?

The 52 Ancestors prompt for this week is "Oldest". How are you going to interpret "oldest"? The oldest child in one of your ancestral families? The oldest photo you have? The oldest document you've ever found? The oldest ancestor you ever met?

This prompt reminded me that I have a mystery photo that I'm still curious about. I first posted about this in 2012, but wanted to see if I could find some new information. 

My grandmother gave this photograph to my mother, but the identity of the woman in the portrait is a mystery. My mother's family was from Queen Anne's County, Maryland and the surrounding areas. Some of the surnames in my grandmother's family are Willis, Chilcutt, Adams, and Covey, so it's possible that the woman is from one of these families.

The photograph is in a hinged case which opens up and has a plush velvet-like material on the left side. From everything I could find online, the style of dress looks like it could be from the 1860s. Her jewelry looks like it might have been enhanced in the photograph. The photograph is behind a glass plate which is very reflective and a bit tricky to capture with my camera. I think the photo is most likely an ambrotype.

The Daguerreian Society has some good information on the history of daguerreotype and ambrotype photographs and their cases. The outer case for this photograph looks like a Union Case which dates it to sometime from 1855-1865. A Union Case was a mixture (or union) of shellac and wood fibers that were pressed into a steel mold. Phototree.com has some examples of women's clothing that also leads me to believe the photo is from this time period.

I wondered if the design on the case could shed any light as to its origins or time period. I found a match for the case on CivilWarTalk.com's forum where they were discussing the meaning of the six-sided star. It was mentioned there that the US Army Eighth Corps adopted the six-sided star as their insignia in the summer of 1864.

From Wikipedia, the Union Army VIII Corps badge looked like this:

A short history of the VIII Corps states that they were based in Maryland, so that at least matches the location of my mother's family. Of course, I don't even know for sure that the picture is of one of her ancestors! I can't really draw any conclusions from any of this, but it was interesting to find a match for the case. I don't know of anyone from her mother's family that served in the Civil War, but I don't have a lot of details on some of them. If anyone has suggestions on finding more out about this photograph, I'd love to hear from you!

#52Ancestors is a series of weekly family history prompts developed by Amy Johnson Crow.