A Guide to the Thomas L. Rosser Ambrotype , ca. 1858 #1171-i

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Administrative Information

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Preferred Citation

Thomas L. Rosser Ambrotype, Accession #1171-i , Special Collections Dept., University of Virginia Library, Charlottesville, Va.

Acquisition Information

The ambrotype was a gift to the Library from Mrs. Brenton S. Halsey of Richmond, Virginia, on November 23, 1987.

Scope and Content Information

This item, ca. 1858, is an ambrotype of Thomas Lafayette Rosser (1836-1910) as a West Point cadet. He was born in Campbell County, Virginia, but his family had moved to Panola County, Texas, when he was thirteen. Rosser was nominated to the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, by Congressman Lemuel Dale Evans (1810-1877) who was afterward chief justice of the Texas Supreme Court.

Rosser enrolled at the Academy on July 1, 1856, and his photograph depicts him during his sophomore year when his standing was 42 out of a class of 52. He was physically described as having black hair and dark brown eyes with a height of six feet two inches. West Point had a five year curriculum for its cadets during Rosser's enrollment, but he resigned on April 22, 1861, two weeks before the graduation of the class of 1861. He joined the Confederacy, and during the Civil War was eventually promoted to the rank of major general. Afterwards he settled in Charlottesville during the 1880's, became its postmaster, and later served as a brigadier general during the Spanish-American War.

This photograph was reproduced in Millard Kessler Bushong's and Dean McKoin Bushong's Fightin' Tom Rosser, C.S.A. (Shippensburg, Pennsylvania: Beidel Printing House, Inc.,1983) on page twelve.