John Patterson Gulick sits in the Capitol dome in Washington, D.C., with an open book on his knee and his arm resting on a worktable. On and around the table are seen familiar items connected to the photographer’s trade. The space was probably used by the men credited with this portrait, William H. Bell and A.F. Hall. Their works include numerous exterior and interior views of the Capitol after the dome was completed in 1865.
Gulick was born in 1810 in Northumberland County, Pennsylvania, and took an itinerant journey to Washington. In the early 1840s, he made his way to White Pigeon, Michigan, with stops in Illinois and Iowa. In Michigan, he married and started a family that grew to include eight children.
The family left Michigan in 1846, and lived in Pennsylvania and Virginia’s Northern Neck before and during the early part of the Civil War. Gulick spent at least five years as a policeman at the Capitol. In the early 1870s, the family settled in Grand Junction, Iowa, where Gulick became a hotelkeeper. He died in 1895.
Ronald S. Coddington is publisher of Military Images, a magazine dedicated to showcasing and preserving photos of Civil War soldiers and sailors.
