Carte de visite or CDV cards were a new form of calling card that featured tiny (about 2 ¼ “ x 3 ½ “) photographs of a
person mounted on a slightly larger card. First popularized by photographer Louis
Dodero of Marseilles, France in the early 1850s, the cards became enormously
popular in Mercer County and throughout the United States during the Civil War.
This card by
Hightstown photographer Richard R. Priest, features Civil War sailor Charles
Mount. It’s featured in Richard Burton’s terrific Flicker set of CDVs featuring Trenton, Hightstown and other local residents in the later 1800s.
Richard did some
terrific research on Chas. (Charles) Mount, and reports that the "Record of Officers and Men
of New Jersey in the Civil War", 1876, by William Stryker, has Charles W.
Mount mustering in on August 11, 1864 and mustering out on May 11, 1865. He also
determined that the ship name printed on Mount’s sailor’s hat is probably the
USS Canandaigua.
The sailor pictured
is probably Charles W. Mount, youngest son of Ezekiel and Anne (Wright)
Mount. Charles and his wife, Anna
Williamson, raised their 5 children in Hightstown, NJ. He was hired as
postmaster for the ETRA post office when it was created in 1890. [ETRA, a
village in East Windsor that sprang up around Cosman’s mill. Originally called Scrabbletown
or Milford, with the arrival of the post office, the town changed its name to
ETRA – the initials of its most prominent resident at the time: Edward
Taylor Riggs Applegate. For more about this village, see Kathleen M. Middleton’s
excellent publication East WindsorLandmarks available online.]
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