This post-war bust view of General Chilton shows him as an older gentleman wearing a heavy suit jacket and bow tie. The photograph measures 5.5 inches in length by 4.75 inches wide.

The reverse of the image has two pencil inscriptions: “Gen. R.H. Chilton,” and “Adj. Gen. A.N.Va & Chief of Staff to Gen. R. E. Lee.”

The photograph is in good condition. However, three out of four corners have been trimmed.

This photograph is a gelatin print, the gateway process to modern photography. Getting its start in the mid-1870s, it gained popularity into the twentieth century. This print was made by the Cook Studio in Richmond.

General Robert Hall Chilton (1815–1879) was a U.S. Army officer who later served as a brigadier general in the Confederate Army during the Civil War. A graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point, he first served on the western frontier and in the Mexican–American War, where he earned distinction for bravery at the Battle of Buena Vista. During the Civil War, Chilton became one of Robert E. Lee’s senior staff officers, serving for much of the conflict as chief of staff and later as inspector general for the Army of Northern Virginia. After the war, he settled in Columbus, Georgia, where he became president of the Columbus Manufacturing Company in 1869 and remained active in local industry until his death there in 1879. He is buried in Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond, Virginia.

The Cook studio was owned by George S. Cook whose two sons, George LaGrange Cook and Heustis Cook, also worked as photographers. The father, George S. Cook, is famously known for taking the first combat images of ironclads firing on Ft. Moultrie in 1863. George S. was born in 1819 in Connecticut and moved south to Louisiana in 1839. From there, he moved several times (always remaining in the South), making money as a merchant and studying photography until he eventually wound up in Richmond in 1880, where he bought Anderson’s photography studio. This is where many of the original glass plate negatives came from to reproduce his photographs. The Cook studio also purchased other collections of negatives as well.  [cla][ph:cla]

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