THREE POST CIVIL WAR PHOTO ALBUMS BELONGING TO THE TURNER AND CUTTS FAMILIES OF WASHINGTON, DC, AND MARE ISLAND, CALIFORNIA, 1860s - ca.1920s

[various places, 1920. Three albums spanning the lives of a few generations of members of the Turner and Cutts families. Many of the men in the Cutts family served in the military from the Civil War era to the Spanish American War to World War I. The images document their time in Washington, DC; Lima, Peru; Mare Island, California; and a scattering of other places. Civil War Brig. General Richard Domincus Cutts' image is present. His son Richard Malcolm Cutts (1846-1886), a graduate of the Naval Academy was posted to the Naval base on Mare Island in California, the first US naval base on the west coast. He died at age 40 in California, and his wife continued to live on the island until her death in 1918. His son Richard M. Cutts, Jr., USMC was married on Mare Island in 1900 and many of the images in the second and third albums are from his family's time there. A collection of some 326 carte-de-visites, cabinet photos, tintypes, cyanotypes, and black & white images, varying in size, many with captions below the photos. A few are faded, one shows insect damage, else very good, clear.
The first album is an elaborately bound Turkey morocco and gilt photo album, 10 x 8 in., manufactured by William W. Harding of Philadelphia, with approx. 135 photos, including some 104 carte-de-visites, 6 cabinet photos, and 5 tintypes. Gilt decorations on spine, gilt stamped title "Photographs" and gilt lettering at the base of the spine "Flexible Chain-Backed Pat'd Oct. 17, 1865." Embossed gilt panels on front and rear boards, all edges gilt, secured by two metal clasps. Gilt ownership name in a recessed panel on front board: "[?] Turner." Some scuffing and wear to leather. Photos are inserted into cut-out "pocket" windows, the cabinet cards one to a page, carte-de-visites four to a page. Several have late 1860s or early 1870s dates in pencil or ink on the versos. Some light soiling to album pages, occasional tears to edges of the pocket windows. Approximately 27 of the images are of men in uniform, likely veterans of the Civil War.
Many of the photographers are identified by their imprints on the versos: W. Kurtz, NY; Solano Photographic Art Studio, Vallejo, CA; M.P. & A.I. Rice, Wash. DC; Bradley & Rulofson, San Francisco; Courret Hermanos, Lima, Peru; Philp & Solomons Metropolitan Gallery, Wash. DC; Morse's Palace of Art, San Francisco [advertised in color on verso of photo]; Photographic Artist B. Moses, New Orleans; and several more.
There are two carte-de-visites of Dolley Madison (1768-1849), one identified on the verso as being from the studio of Alexander Gardner, No. 511 Seventh St., Wash. DC; the other from Brady's National Photographic Portrait Galleries, Broadway & Tenth Sts., NY & No. 352 Pennsylvania Ave., Wash. DC. [Matthew Brady is known to have made two daguerreotypes of Dolley Madison not long before her death. These two photos are similar but not identical to those images].
This album apparently belonged to a member of the Turner family, people well represented in the images, along with their closely connected relatives the Cutts. Many of them lived in the Washington, DC area, others in California. Some were evidently posted to Lima, Peru. One image is of Richard Dominicus Cutts (1817-1883), a Union Army Brevet Brig. General and a nephew of Dolley Madison. He served on Major General Halleck's staff during the war, and later was a member of the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey.
The first cabinet photo in the album is of Lucia Cutts, Richard Dominicus Cutts' daughter, identified by name in pencil on the verso. She edited the "Memoirs and Letters of Dolly Madison," her great aunt, which were published by Houghton Mifflin in 1886. Another photo shows Lucia sitting in the midst of a group of women, also annotated in pencil on the verso as "Aunt Lucia." The second cabinet photo is of Dr. John Mills Brown, Surgeon General, USN, husband of Alice Turner. [Alice Turner's sister Emily was married to Richard Dominicus Cutts' son Richard Malcolm Cutts (1846-1886)]. Another of the cabinet photos is of another of R.D. Cutts' children, Gertrude, who married Moorfield Storey (1845-1929).
The rest of the album contains of images of women, children, and men in uniform, many identified by name on the versos: Daniel K. Turner; Richard M. Cutts; Montgomery Fletcher; T.B.M. Mason; a carte-de-visite of three young men in letter sweaters, identified on the verso as students at the U.S. Naval Academy, Newport, RI [a prep school]. Another of a very young man in navy garb, taken at the photo studios of Courret Hermanos in Lima, is identified on the verso as "Wm. Adams (App. Boy), deserted U.S. [Str.?] Ossipee March 1." [We found his name on the muster rolls for the Ossipee dated Dec. 31, 1867, noting that he had enlisted in Newport in June 1865, for service until the age of 21, and came aboard the Ossipee in Oct. 1866. He was born in Roxbury, MA in ca. 1850. A note in a column of the muster roll says he was "reduced from Lds by Sum. Ct. M'l 11/27/[1867]."]
A group of photos show ladies in costume, including a woman covering all but her eyes with a shawl, another in a church costume for the feast of a patron saint, another dressed as a nun, etc. The five tintypes include two approx. the size of carte-de-visites, the others very small, including one in a gilt frame. There are also about a dozen street scenes, several of them from Lima, one of which shows the "Circo De Toras," the oldest bullfighting stadium in the Americas. In addition there are eleven reproduced images of classical sculptures.
The second album is 7 x 10 in. bound in rust red fabrikoid, with "Photographs" lettered in gilt on the front cover. On the patterned endpapers in ink is a note that the photos "were taken by my father, Richard M. Cutts," a reference to R.D. Cutts' grandson R.M. Cutts (1878-1934), a Colonel in the US Marine Corps who saw service in the Spanish American War. There are 58 photos laid down on 13 leaves, including 48 cyanotypes and 10 black & white images, most with captions in ink below. They vary in size from 2 1/4 x 3 1/4 in. to 5 1/4 x 3 1/2 in. Several show facilities on Mare Island, a row of tents labeled "Marine Barracks," a cook tent, troops drilling with firearms. There are also images of the USS Wisconsin from a distance, at port, on deck showing a Maxim Nordenfelt 6 pndr., torpedos leaving a tube, the Marine Guard of the USS Wisconsin at Magdalena Bay, Mexico, March 1901. Local scenes of the Hotel Del Monte, Cypress Point, Monterey, Mt. Tamalpais, and a picnic at Bremerton show members of the family and friends.
The third album, bound in limp suede, with "Kodaks" stamped on the front cover, measures 8 1/2 x 12 1/2 in. and contains approx. 133 black & white photos laid down on thin album sheets, varying in size from 3 1/4 x 4 1/4 in. to 4 1/2 x 6 1/2 in., some with captions. Some wear and scuffing to covers. There are views of the Mare Island lighthouse; the Spar Deck, Golf Links, Mare Island as well as images of holes No. 4, 5, and 9 [some 11 images of various parts of the golf course, likely taken ca. 1900s-1910s]; the residence of Mrs. Cutts on the island; two photos of children dressed in elaborate bird costumes; 5 photos of Native Americans [Hopi?], including one of a woman fashioning a squash blossom hairdo for another; and many other domestic and family scenes. [The Golf Links on Mare Island were opened in 1892, making it the oldest golf course west of the Mississippi. It was originally laid out for the use of the Navy but became a public course about 100 years later when the Naval base closed. See Michael Gordon's article in the Times Herald, 2/21/2020]. Many of the Turner and Cutts family members identified in these albums had connections to the Washington, DC area in the Civil War era. Richard Dominicus Cutts was the son of Richard Cutts (1771-1845), a U.S. Congressman from Maine and his wife Anna Payne, Dolley Madison's sister. Daniel Turner (1796-1860) was a U.S. Congressman from North Carolina. Two of his daughters married into the Cutts and Browne families.
Later generations continued in military service in the west. Richard Malcolm Cutts Jr. (1878-1934) was an ensign in the Navy during the Spanish American War. He transferred to the Marine Corps in 1899, was married at Mare Island, became a colonel in 1922, and in 1923-4 was commandant of the Dominican Republic National Army. He died in San Diego. According to his obituary in Washington's Evening Star on Nov. 29, 1934, he and his son Lt. Richard M. Cutts III were co-inventors of the Cutts compensator, "an ordnance shock absorber" used by the Government.