Item No. 4920537

A vignette CDV portrait of George Holmes Bixby, a New England physician who served as an acting assistant surgeon in the U.S. Navy during the Civil War. Educated at Vermont Medical College, Harvard Medical School, and Dartmouth College, he subsequently studied gynecology in Paris and Vienna. After volunteering his medical services at the outbreak of the war, he treated sick and wounded Union soldiers aboard the river hospital steamer Empress following the Battle of Shiloh. On June 1, 1862, he officially joined the Navy and became senior medical officer aboard the hospital ship U.S.S. Red Rover, serving with the Mississippi Squadron until his honorable discharge in September 1865. The Red Rover was a pioneering U.S. Navy hospital ship that cared for casualties and the sick of the western armies. The carte has no photographer’s imprint, but written faintly in pencil is the inscription, “Asst. Surg. Bixby / US Navy / 1864 / “Red Rover.” It measures about 2 1/2” x 4” and has slightly trimmed corners.