#stephen pollard

Unknown Soldier in famed Library of Congress Civil War portrait identified.

A chance encounter between the young soldier’s great-great granddaughter Patricia Mullinax and avid Civil War photography collector Tom Liljenquist led to the identification of Stephen Pollard. His face has been printed in books and used in films, but for decades, no one knew the name of the fierce-eyed Civil War soldier in the portrait, known only as “unidentified.”

Pollard was a Confederate soldier from Georgia with a thin moustache, wearing an old-fashioned tie, with a brace of pistols in his belt and an 1855 muzzle-loading pistol, with stock, in his two hands, according to the Washington Post. The young soldier went on to survive the Civil War — and eventually have his image featured in Ken Burns’s famous film on the conflict, becoming famous, but still unknown.