The Last Muster

A continuation of the remarkable documentary history of the early Republic

Maureen Taylor, the nation’s foremost historical photo detective, continues her quest to document the Revolutionary War generation with this collection of rare nineteenth-century photographic images. Primarily comprised of daguerreotypes, ambrotypes, and carte de visite paper photographs, this collection of nearly sixty images presents new works of photography and art. It assigns faces to a previously un-illustrated war and tells the stories of our nation’s Founding Fathers and Mothers, updating and supplementing research published over a century ago.

Taylor explains how she collected the images for this project and describes the exhaustive research involved in dating and identifying each image. She also explains the process she used for investigating the story and genealogy of each subject. The array of images is expansive and includes veterans, loyalists, Native Americans, African Americans, children, and women. Although the faces are old and wizened, the stories they tell are of youthful bravery in the early days of the Republic.

The Last Muster, Volume 2 continues the author’s contribution to the history of the American Revolution, the early Republic, and photography. Through these portraits and the accompanying narrative, readers have the opportunity to relive the Revolutionary War.