Excellent, mid-19th century souvenir featuring the “Bushong House / Battle of New Market, Va. May 15, 1864.” This is the first we’ve offered with a New Market Battlefield image, as most feature Gettysburg.

This particular souvenir is made of a fired “minie ball”, presumably picked up on the New Market battlefield. The embedded “Stanhope” lens (extremely small glass beads with black and white photographic images) shows a fine view of the Bushong farm. Image remains very clear. Lenses were made in France.

On May 15, 1864 the Bushong’s fertile wheat fields became a battleground. Three generations of the family took shelter in the basement of their home. After the battle, their home was pressed into service as a hospital. The Bushong property was sold in 1942. By 1944, it was owned by George Randall Collins, VMI Class of 1911. In 1964, the Bushong Farm and surrounding property was deeded to VMI, creating the first act of Civil War battlefield preservation in the Shenandoah Valley.

Stanhopes or Stanho-scopes are optical devices that enable the viewing of microphotographs. A Stanhope lens is a simple, one-piece microscope invented by Charles, the third Earl of Stanhope. It is a cylinder of glass with each end curved outwards, one being more convex than the other. Because its construction is simple and economical, it was popular in the 19th century. In 1857, René Dagron modified the lens by keeping one curved end to refract light while sectioning the other end flat and locating it at the focal plane of the curved side. Dagron used the modified Stanhope lens to mount microscopic pictures.   [jet] [ph:L]

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