TIPTON STEREO VIEW OF 1ST MASS INFANTRY MONUMENT, GETTYSBURG

TIPTON STEREO VIEW OF 1ST MASS INFANTRY MONUMENT, GETTYSBURG

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Item Code: 2026-1901

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This is a stereo view of the 1st Massachusetts Infantry Monument at Gettysburg, made by W. H. Tipton, the best-known Gettysburg battlefield photographer. It most likely dates from the late 1880s or 1890s.

The card has a cream-yellow mount with rounded corners. Two nearly identical sepia photographs sit side by side, so that a stereoscope shows them as one three-dimensional image. Decorative lettering runs up the left edge: “Artistic Stereo Gems of Gettysburg Scenery.” The right edge reads “Photographed by W. H. Tipton, Gettysburg, Pa.” The printed caption at the bottom is “915—1st Mass. Inf. Monument, Emmitsburg road.” The 915 is Tipton’s catalogue number for this view.

The photograph shows the granite monument to the regiment. The upper part is a large diamond carved in relief, and the words “FIRST MASS.” and “INFANTRY” are cut into the stone below it. The back is printed with “Tipton’s Gettysburg Views,” an interlocking “WHT” trademark seal (reading “Established 1863, Artistic Photography”), and an advertisement. In it, Tipton says he has photographed the field ever since the 1863 battle. He also boasts that his collection of thousands of negatives is larger than all his competitors combined.

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts erected the monument on June 30, and it was dedicated on July 2nd, 1886, on the 23rd anniversary of the regiment’s fight on that ground. The monument’s nine-foot base supports the diamond symbol of the Third Corps, and it stands 13 feet, 3 inches high in total. The front of the diamond has a relief of a skirmisher climbing over a split rail fence. The image is meaningful because the 1st Massachusetts held a skirmish line on the army’s front on July 2nd. At the time of the battle, the Rogers house stood just south of the monument site, and the yard where the monument stands was where the skirmish reserve was posted. The photographer. William H. Tipton started in Gettysburg as a teenage apprentice to the Tyson brothers around the time of the battle, which explains his claim of “ever since 1863.” He went on to dominate commercial photography of the battlefield for decades. His views document the “monument boom” of the 1880s and 1890s, when Northern states and veterans’ associations placed hundreds of memorials on the field. [jet][ph:L]

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