Faces of Freedom
Rare Photos Capture America’s
Last Revolutionary War Patriots
By Multimedia Marketing Group
ROCKFORD, Ill. — In 1864, with the nation still locked in the throes of the Civil War, two little-known brothers from Connecticut set out with cameras, glass plates, and quiet determination. Their mission was not to document battlefield carnage or political leaders—but to seek out and photograph the last living soldiers of the American Revolution.
Their subjects were aged veterans—men well past their hundredth birthdays—who had once fought under Washington, witnessed the birth of a nation, and now lived in obscurity in scattered towns and villages. They were nearly forgotten, until the Moore brothers—Eben and Augustus—tracked them down to preserve their likenesses before it was too late.
What emerged was a series of six hauntingly intimate portraits that offer a rare visual bridge between America’s founding and the modern age. Their faces, lined with time and memory, stare back at us not as marble icons but as men: vulnerable, resolute, and remarkably human.
As the United States Army prepares to mark its 250th anniversary in 2025, these photographs—captured at a time when photography itself was still a developing art—stand as powerful reminders of how image, memory, and identity intertwine.
“It’s not just about who they were,” said historian and photo genealogist Maureen Taylor. “It’s about what they witnessed. These portraits collapse centuries and place us face-to-face with living history.”
The Camera’s Dawn: From Drawing with Light to Documenting Legacy
Long before smartphones turned everyone into a photographer, capturing an image was an act of science, patience, and wonder. The word “photography”—from the Greek phos (light) and graphê (drawing)—literally means “drawing with light.” And in the 19th century, that light began to write history in ways the world had never seen before.
The earliest photographic processes required hours, sometimes days—of exposure. In the 1820s, French inventor Nicéphore Niépce developed heliography, a method of etching images onto pewter plates using bitumen and sunlight. His first surviving image, a grainy view from his window in Le Gras, France, represents not only the world’s oldest photograph, but also a moment when human memory began to shift mediums—from spoken and written word to light-fixed imagery.
By the 1840s and 1850s, advances in chemistry and optics led to more practical photographic techniques like daguerreotypes and albumen prints. These processes required precision, but they opened the door for more widespread portraiture, especially in America, where the appetite for self-representation grew alongside a nation’s restless expansion.
It was in this era of photographic experimentation and national upheaval that the Moore brothers acted. The timing was critical. The last veterans of the Revolution were in their final years. Their recollections were fading. But the lens could still capture what memory could not.
These early photographs did more than preserve likenesses—they democratized remembrance. No longer was legacy confined to the oil portraits of the elite. A farmer, a blacksmith, a forgotten foot soldier could now be seen, documented, and remembered. For the first time in history, visual records were no longer just symbolic; they were personal, immediate, and enduring.
As MMG reflects on the evolution of visual storytelling, we see the DNA of our own work in these early innovations. The desire to preserve, to inform, to inspire—these are constants. Whether through glass plates or digital files, we continue to “draw with light,” illuminating stories that matter.
Six Soldiers, Six Stories: The Men Behind the Lens
By the 1860s, time was closing in on the Revolutionary generation. The men who had once stood with Washington and fought for independence were now in their final days. They had outlived two wars, several presidencies, and the invention of photography itself.
Recognizing the historical urgency, photographers and brothers Eben and Augustus Moore embarked on a remarkable journey—to find and photograph the last surviving veterans of the American Revolution. The result was six powerful images. Grainy and stark, yet dignified, these portraits remain among the only visual records of individuals who fought in America’s founding conflict.
One of the most striking is Nicholas Veeder, a New Yorker who claimed to have fought at the Battle of Oriskany in 1777. According to local lore, he was just 15 when he picked up a musket and marched alongside General Herkimer. Living to the age of 101, Veeder became a local legend in Scotia, New York—leading annual Independence Day parades in his original uniform and transforming his home into a self-styled museum dubbed “Fort Veeder.” In his portrait, he stands in front of that home, aged yet resolute, with the Schenectady Liberty Flag flying proudly behind him. It’s a pose that merges mythology, patriotism, and living memory.
Another was Lemuel Cook, a Connecticut native who enlisted in the Continental Army at the age of 16 and fought at the decisive Battle of Brandywine. Cook lived to be 106. In his photograph, his eyes seem to hold both exhaustion and pride—a window into a past that shaped a future.
There was also Alexander Milliner, who served as a drummer boy in the Continental Army and claimed to have personally known George Washington. “He used to pat me on the head,” Milliner recalled in his later years. His portrait shows a small, elderly man whose legacy towered far beyond his stature.
These veterans—some documented soldiers, others remembered more through folklore—became symbols of a waning era. Their stories were not always pristine. Some records remain disputed. But that ambiguity is part of what makes their images so vital. They remind us that history is not carved in marble—it is remembered in bone and breath, in fading recollections and photographs that outlive the subjects themselves.
Don N. Hagist, editor of The Journal of the American Revolution, later deepened the research behind these portraits in his book The Revolution’s Last Men. He reminds us that these were not mythical Founding Fathers, but everyday men who helped shape the world we live in.
Their photos are not simply relics. They are acts of witnessing.
At MMG, we see a powerful lesson here. The camera does more than capture appearances—it affirms presence. When we document a story visually, whether in a studio, on a street, or in the digital cloud, we preserve something elemental: proof that a life was lived, and that it mattered.
From the Carte de Visite to the Selfie: A Story Told in Frames
In the mid-19th century, photography became more than an art—it became a social phenomenon.
The carte de visite, introduced in New York around 1859, revolutionized how people saw and shared themselves. These small, affordable portraits—about the size of a modern business card—were exchanged like calling cards and tucked into family albums, allowing for the first time a wide public to own images of their loved ones, leaders, and heroes. Soldiers carried them into battle. Families sent them across states. Politicians and entertainers used them to shape public image.
And just like that, portraiture became democratic. It was no longer reserved for the elite or the wealthy. Ordinary people—shopkeepers, laborers, soldiers, and survivors of the American Revolution—could now leave behind a visual legacy.
The carte de visite was the selfie of its time: a handheld token of identity, often posed, sometimes sentimental, always meaningful. It allowed people to say, “This is who I am. Remember me.”
Fast forward to today, and the selfie has become ubiquitous. Snapped on phones and shared across social media in seconds, today’s portraits often lack the ritual of the past—but not the intention. Behind every filtered photo or video post is the same human instinct to document, connect, and be seen.
At Multimedia Marketing Group, we don’t see this as a departure from the past—we see it as a continuation. From sepia-toned cartes to pixel-perfect reels, the visual story of humanity is still being told. But now, we’re armed with tools unimaginable to early photographers: artificial intelligence, CGI, motion graphics, asynchronous video, and immersive digital environments.
Yet technology alone doesn’t make a story meaningful. Intentionality does.
That’s why MMG approaches every project—from filmed interviews to social campaigns—with the same reverence early photographers had when preparing a plate: with focus, purpose, and a sense that something lasting is about to be created. Whether we’re producing a brand ambassador video, a virtual training experience, or a photo documentary, our mission remains rooted in one principle: storytelling that honors the real people behind the picture.
In many ways, today’s selfie culture proves how far we’ve come. But it also asks us to slow down and ask: What are we trying to say with this image? What memory are we trying to preserve?
Like the Moore brothers with their cameras, MMG stands at the intersection of innovation and memory, capturing modern stories with the same respect we afford historic ones.
History in Focus: Legacy Through the Lens
When we look into the eyes of the last Revolutionary War veterans through those fading 19th-century photographs, we’re not just seeing men—we’re seeing memory itself. Weathered faces frozen in time, captured not for fame, but for remembrance.
These portraits are quiet and still, yet they speak volumes.
They speak of endurance—of men who lived through musket fire and colonial uncertainty, who aged through revolutions both political and technological.
They speak of humanity—flawed, proud, forgotten, remembered.
And they speak of legacy—the most powerful force a photograph can carry.
In a world now flooded with imagery, it’s easy to forget how radical it once was to capture a moment. To fix it. To make it permanent. In 1864, the Moore brothers understood that urgency. And today, so do we.
At Multimedia Marketing Group, we believe legacy is never accidental—it’s built, frame by frame. Whether we’re preserving the voice of a nonprofit leader, animating a brand’s digital spokesperson, or capturing a community initiative on film, we’re doing more than creating media. We’re preserving meaning.
That’s why these six images from the 1800s matter so deeply to us. They remind us that behind every campaign, every video, every photo, there’s a human story—sometimes extraordinary, sometimes ordinary, always worth telling.
As we prepare to honor 250 years of the United States Army and reflect on how far we’ve come as a nation and as storytellers, we’re reminded that our tools may evolve, but our mission does not: to connect people to people, past to present, and memory to message.
Because whether it’s a portrait etched in silver nitrate or a selfie shared in seconds, one truth remains:
Images endure.
And through them, so do we.
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- Lemuel Cook, aged 105
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- Samuel downing age 102
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- Adam Link aged 102
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- William Hutchings aged 100
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- Alexander Millener aged 104
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- Daniel Waldo, aged 102
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- Nicholas Veeder
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- The carte de visite
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- Six Soldiers, Six Stories: The Men Behind the Lens
Bibliography & Further Reading
Curated by Multimedia Marketing Group
Historical Context & Photography Origins
- “The Birth of Photography” – A timeline of early photographic innovations, including heliography and the first camera images.
Napoleon.org – Young Historians Archive - “View from the Window at Le Gras” by Nicéphore Niépce (1826/27) – Considered the world’s first surviving photograph.
Wikipedia – View from the Window at Le Gras
Photography Terms and Formats
- Carte de Visite – The 19th-century photographic format that became a cultural phenomenon.
Wikipedia – Carte de Visite - Tintype Photography – Durable iron-based images popular during and after the Civil War.
Wikipedia – Tintype - Cabinet Cards and Albumen Prints – Photographic portrait formats that followed cartes de visite.
Wikipedia – Cabinet Card
Wikipedia – Albumen Print
Books & Scholarly Research
- “The Revolution’s Last Men: The Soldiers Behind the Photographs” by Don N. Hagist – A detailed look at the lives and legends of the last Revolutionary War veterans.
Available on Amazon - “The Last Muster” by Maureen Taylor – A visual history of the Revolutionary War generation told through rare photographs.
Maureen Taylor – The Photo Detective - Journal of the American Revolution – Ongoing scholarly research on the Revolutionary War and its final participants.
All Things Liberty – Journal Homepage
Multimedia Features
- “America’s Last Revolutionaries: Rare Photos of US Patriots” – A short documentary by the BBC exploring the six final veteran portraits and their meanings.
BBC Reel Video - “How Two Brothers Tried to Photograph the Last Survivors of the Revolutionary War” – A reflective article on the Moore brothers’ mission.
DPReview Feature
Local Lore and Archives
- Nicholas Veeder and the Schenectady Liberty Flag – Local history and legacy from upstate New York’s last Revolutionary War veteran.
Schenectady County Historical Society (direct link to Veeder content may require archive search)
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