Firm
Sam A. Cooley, U.S. Photographer, Department of the South
The photographic business Samuel A. Cooley ran behind the Union lines on the South Carolina coast, advertised under a title he awarded himself. He brought three assistants down from New York and worked from at least four places.
Cooley was a sutler to the 6th Connecticut Infantry, not a soldier and not a commissioned army photographer. What he had was access, and he used it: he styled himself U.S. Photographer, Department of the South, and sometimes Photographer Tenth Army Corps, in the way Alexander Gardner billed himself photographer to the Army of the Potomac.
The back of one of his cartes de visite lists studios at Hilton Head, Folly Island and Jacksonville, Florida, alongside the Beaufort gallery where he sought civilian custom.
Partners and operators
- Samuel Abbot Cooleyproprietor · 1862 – 1865
Addresses
- Cooley’s Beaufort galleryBeaufort
- Cooley’s Hilton Head studioHilton Head
- Cooley’s Folly Island studioFolly Island
- Cooley’s Jacksonville studioJacksonville, Fla.
Works
- Charleston, South Carolina. Beacon on parapet of Fort Sumter1865. · Samuel Abbot CooleyVerifiedLibrary of Congress · LC-B811- 3055 [P&P]
- Ordnance ya[rd], Morris Island, near Charleston, S.C.[1865 April] · Samuel Abbot CooleyAttributedLibrary of Congress · LOT 4172, no. 201 [P&P]
Statement by statement
- VerifiedCooley advertised as “U.S. Photographer, Department of the South” and sometimes as “Photographer Tenth Army Corps”.Davis & Melton 2020
- VerifiedA carte de visite verso lists studios at Hilton Head, Folly Island and Jacksonville, Florida.Davis & Melton 2020
- AttributedCooley and his assistants produced more than two thousand images of Beaufort, Hilton Head and the sea islands.Teal, Partners with the Sun Davis & Melton 2020
Sources
- Stephen Davis and Jack W. Melton Jr., 100 Significant Civil War Photographs: Charleston in the War (Charleston: Historical Publications LLC, 2020).
- Harvey S. Teal, Partners with the Sun: South Carolina Photographers, 1840–1940 (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2001).
- Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. https://www.loc.gov/pictures/