Civil War-era government bakery and bakers.
Photo courtesy Cowan’s Auctions, Cincinnati, OH (www.cowansauctions.com).
Armies had to be fed, not just armed. The inglorious yet important task of providing fresh bread to the many thousands of Union soldiers who occupied Alexandria, Virginia, the strategically significant town situated across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C., fell to the roughly 200 civilian employees of the city’s U.S. Government Bakery. Using the facility’s 20 ovens, these men—pictured at their work stations in this undated photo from the lens of famed Civil War photographer Alexander Gardner—produced as many as 100,000 loafs of bread a day for the troops.
Until recently, Gardner’s striking image of the bakery’s white-aproned workforce remained hidden away in the private collection of a family descended from its original collector, a Union soldier from New York. To the best of our knowledge, it appears here on the printed page for the first time.
The non-profit Center for Civil War Photography is devoted to collecting, preserving, and digitizing Civil War images for the public benefit.
Related topics: food and drink
