Frederick Eugene Durbec

Durbec was born in Charleston in 1836, the son of a successful businessman. He worked first for the Tyler & Co. gallery and then for Quinby before joining James M. Osborn in 1858.

When the partnership dissolved in February 1862 Durbec, twenty-five, enlisted in the Beauregard Light Infantry Volunteers and was elected orderly sergeant. He was in action at Secessionville in June 1862. Chronic rheumatism forced him to resign seven months later.

He went back to photographic work for a few years after the war, then into other business, including founding several newspapers. He died at Clarkesville, in northeast Georgia, on 1 October 1894.

Durbec is a Charlestonian by birth in a trade largely practiced in the city by northerners — Cook from Connecticut, Osborn from New York, Quinby from New York, Barnard and Cooley from Connecticut. The pattern is worth noticing: photography came to Charleston as an import, and most of the men who practiced it there had learned it somewhere else.

Beauregard Light Infantry Volunteers, from February 1862; elected orderly sergeant; in action at Secessionville, 16 June 1862; resigned about seven months after enlisting on account of chronic rheumatism.

Work from the partnership years is credited to the firm, not to either partner. Where an individual is named for a particular Fort Sumter view in April 1861 it is Osborn, on the strength of the Charleston Courier’s report; nothing this section has seen places Durbec at the fort.