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Private Richard Gomar

Private Richard Gomar Tintype
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Tintype, circa 1880

8.5 cm x 6 cm

From the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Regiment photographs
Photo. 72.4


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  • Main description

[ This description is from the project: Witness to America's Past ]

Richard Gomar (Footnote 1) enlisted in Company H on 17 April 1863 at the age of seventeen and was mustered in on 13 May. He was a laborer from Battle Creek, Michigan. He was mustered out after teh regiment's return to Boston on 20 August 1865. He received a state bounty of $50, and his last known address was Cedar Rapids, Iown. (Footnote 2)

Portrayed here in a half-length study, Gomar is in civilian clothes and on his waistcoat is wearing a membership badge of the Grand Army of the Republic, the Union veterans' organization. This version of the badge was adopted in 1880. (Footnote 3) According to regulation, Gomar wears the badge on the left breast of his waistcoat, but the tintype process has reversed the image.

Footnotes

1. Listed as Richard Gomes in Emilio 1894, p. 374; as Richard Gomar in Mass. 1931, 4:696, and according to his muster record (MMA).
2. Massachusetts Soldiers, Sailors, and Marines in the Civil War. 8 vols. Norwood, Mass.: The Norwood Press. 1931-1934; Brookline, Mass. 1935.  4:696; Emilio, Luis F. History of the Fifty-Fourth Regiment of Massachusetts : Volunteer Infantry, 1863-1865. 2nd ed., rev. and corr. with appendix upon treatment of colored prisoners of war. Boston : Boston Book Co., 1894, p. 374.
3. Beath, Robert B. History of the Grand Army of the Republic. New York: Bryan, Taylor, & Co. 1889, p. 656.