An early 1900s photograph album page, black paper, 7” X 5”, with attached photo, 4-3/4” X ¾” of John Singleton Mosby seated outdoors with a young boy at left and woman with young girl at right. Written below this in period colored pencil is, “Mosby, Daughter, Grand / children.” A copy of this photo in a private collection was published in short biography of U.S. Rear Admiral Beverly Mosby Coleman, the young boy at far left in the image. It gives the date of the photo as 1907 and the location as Waterford, in Vienna, Virginia, confirming the information on this original album page and thus identifies Mosby’s daughter as Virginia Stuart Mosby Coleman (1866-1946,) and the granddaughter as Pauline Mosby Coleman Blackwell (1900-1983.) This photo itself was published Civil War Times Illustrated (Aug. 2011) in an article titled, “Mosby’s Slow Fade.”

John Singleton Mosby, the renowned Confederate cavalry and ranger leader should need no introduction to any student of the Civil War. His grandson, Beverly Mosby Coleman (1899-1993) is less well known, but compiled an impressive military record as well, graduating the US Naval Academy in 1922, serving in World War Two and the Korean War, and finally retiring as a Rear-Admiral. He supplied material on his grandfather to various biographers and researchers and this album page likely descended in his family. The reverse of the page has a photo of the same period showing a young woman in a long white dress holding a white parasol identified as Miss Margaret Yong or, we presume, Young. Her identity and connection are unclear, but she was likely a friend of the family.

This is a rather touching family portrait of the famous cavalier. Born in 1833, he looks like he might deserve a well-earned retirement among a loving family, but given the 1907 date, he still had some work in front of him, serving from 1904 to 1910 in the Bureau of Insular and Territorial Affairs, where he was an active prosecutor of corruption, misappropriation of Indian Trust Funds, land fraud, etc., only retiring when forced to by the Taft administration for reasons he intimated to friends that would only redound to his credit if made public. He lived on until 1916, working on his memoirs and apparently losing little of his spirit.   [sr][ph:L]

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