Albert Henry Campbell , Cartographer for the Confederacy
Albert Henry Campbell, photo from Find a Grave, contributed by Gerald Davis
"The general plan of operations was adopted of placing full parties in each county, and maps of each county thus successively surveyed in detail were constructed on a comparatively large scale, giving full credit to heads of field corps in the titles; and also general maps, one north and one south of the James River, were prepared on a smaller scale, preserving all the details. So great was the demand for maps occasioned by frequent changes in the situation of the armies, that it became impossible by the usual method of tracing, to supply them. I conceived the plan of doing this work by photography, though expert photographers pronounced it impracticable, in fact, impossible. To me it was an original idea, though I believe not a new one, but not in practical use. Traced copies were prepared on common tracing-paper in very black India ink, and from these sharp negative by sun-printing were obtained, and from these negatives copies were multiplied by exposure to the sun in frames made for the purpose. The several sections, properly toned, were pasted together in their order and formed the general map, or such portions of it as were desired; it being the policy, as a matter of prudence against capture, to furnish no one but the commanding general and corps commanders with the entire map of a given region."
--Albert Henry Campbell, 1887 |
Maj. Albert Henry Campbell (1826-1899)
Born in Charleston, Kanawha County, (West) Virginia. October 23, 1826. Died Ravenswood, Jackson County, West Virginia. February 23, 1899. Campbell was buried in Hollywood Cemetery, Section R, Lot 200. Campbell’s parents, Mason and Mary, were New Englanders living in Charleston (West) Virginia where he was born October 23, 1826. Campbell’s father was owner and editor of the Charleston Western Courier. In the late 1840s, Mason Campbell relocated the family to Washington D.C. and served as a clerk for the Treasury Department for 38 years. According to a notice in the Washington Evening Star, Campbell continued in that position until his death in 1885 at age 87. He was said to be the “best penman in the office.” Albert evidently acquired meticulous penmanship from his father. Mason Campbell was a staunch Unionist. Albert Henry Campbell married Mary Paine Stebbins in Providence Rhode Island in 1847 and went on to graduate Brown University in 1850. He worked as a civil engineer in San Francisco and accompanied two western railroad expeditions where he honed his mapping skills -- under military engineers Amiel Weeks Whipple in 1853-54 and John Grubb Parke in 1854-55. By 1861, he had returned to Washington, D.C., working in the Department of the Interior as superintendent of the Pacific Wagon Roads Office, which mapped wagon routes to the west. Although his family connections were in New England, Albert sided with the South and relocated to Richmond, Virginia, where his cartographic skills were recognized. He was commissioned a captain of engineers C.S.A. in June 1862 and placed in charge of a newly created Topographic Bureau that supplied detailed maps of Virginia to the Confederacy until the end of the war. "It is true that there were no maps of any account in existence at the time when General Lee assumed the command, that were of any use to the Army of Northern Virginia, June 1st, 1862. " --A. H. Campbell |
