Item No. 8856519

CDV portrait of US Navy Commander Thomas Pattison, from the family album of Dr. Bernard J. D. Irwin, US Army surgeon and Medal of Honor recipient. Pattison is shown in his double-breasted naval frock coat with dress epaulettes, and the reverse bears the imprint of the Oak Gallery, Memphis, Tennessee. The Memphis imprint is particularly significant, as Pattison served as commandant of the US Naval Station at Memphis from March 1863 until July 1865, placing him in the same city and command circles as Irwin during the final years of the Civil War, as Irwin commanded the military hospitals there.

Pattison was a career naval officer who entered the Navy as a midshipman in 1839 and served during the Mexican War aboard several vessels, including the Raritan, Cumberland, Electra, Scorpion, and Reefer. At the outbreak of the Civil War he was executive officer of the Perry when she captured the Confederate privateer Savannah off Charleston in June 1861, and he subsequently commanded the Philadelphia on the Potomac Flotilla and the Sumter in the South Atlantic blockade. In 1863 he joined the Mississippi River Squadron and became commandant of the naval station at Memphis, overseeing naval operations and administration there through the end of the war. Promoted to commander in March 1865, Pattison continued a distinguished postwar career at sea and ashore, eventually attaining the ranks of captain, commodore, and rear admiral before retiring in 1884. He died in 1891.