The Landram Farm – 1921. Before there was a park

Here’s a photo taken in 1921 of Edward L. Landram who was eleven years old when the battle of Spotsylvania raged over his family farm in 1864, fifty-seven years before. The photo was taken by a visiting newspaper man named Leroy T. Vernon who was a political correspondent for the Chicago Daily News and had been campaign manager for President William Howard Taft. Vernon was an avid Civil War buff and when he traveled he toured the battlefields, took photos and bought relics from the locals across the south. This image shows Mr. Landram posed by the 126th Ohio monument, placed in 1914 on his family farm near the Bloody Angle. The monument stood about seventy-four yards from the house noted in my previous post (March 10). A corn crop can be seen growing in the fields and swales all the way up to the Confederate trenches visible along the woods edge. The Battlefield Park would be established in 1927.

This and several other images from the Vernon trip to Spotsylvania will be featured in one of my upcoming books. The original prints are in my private collection.