On August 29, 1864, a photographer posed 28 men of Company B, 9th Pennsylvania Cavalry on the rocky ledge atop Lookout Mountain near Chattanooga, Tennessee.

Captain Edward G. Savage raised the company in Lykens, Wiconisco, Elizabethville, Gratz, Millersburg, and points in between across the Lykens Valley in northern Dauphin County. A handful of recruits also came from the vicinity of Scranton.

Among those photographed was Private William Thomas, a tinsmith from Lykens who had worked as a breaker boy at the Short Mountain Colliery in Wiconisco.

Thomas noted the moment in his diary, published in Yankee Cavalrymen:

“Had our Potograph taken on one plate on Point Look out.”

The photograph is held in the collections of the Library of Congress.

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Read more about Coal Region Civil War soldiers

Letters from War: 1861 Project

Photograph of a Civil War soldier from Eckley, Pennsylvania | Killed in battle in 1862

A sailor at the Battle of Fort Fisher | A fascinating Civil War letter from 1865

Remembering Civil War soldier Joseph Workman | Wiconisco, PA

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