Lincoln in Antietam

[Bill Zuelsdorff]

Hi Guys,

Just wanted to pick your brains to see if anyone could tell me what this means: A student in my wife's class (6th grader) saw this picture of Lincoln in the union camp at Antietam after the battle. It is a Mathew Brady picture with Pinkerton and Gen. McClernand. The question was about the man sitting in the background on the lower left of the picture. He is holding a board or paper with the number 7949 written on it. What does this number stand for? I had never really noticed this before and have seen the picture many times. I looked up the battle casualty numbers and it didn't seem to match even vaguely those numbers for either side. Does anyone know??

[John Wedeward]

It could be the "wet plate" number, although most of the time this number (catalog no.) was eached into the back of the image. Just a quess. Weed

[Bill Zuelsdorff]

It seems as if the number was written on the photo and not on what the man is holding. It must be some kind of id number as it is used in the Library of Congress cataloguing of the picture.