Allen Christian Redwood and the 55th Virginia Regiment
Epilogue
After the war, Redwood was reunited with his parents and siblings in Baltimore.1 There he opened an art studio, worked for lithographers and gave art lessons. In 1874 he produced his first Civil War pictures, consisting of numerous illustrations for a pro-Southern cleric's account of his incarceration at Fort Delaware. The book's title, ‘United States Bonds’ suggests the author shared his illustrator's love of punning.
In 1870 Redwood met and fell in love with Sophie Bledsoe Herrick, a divorcee and regular contributor of scientific and literary articles to Scribner's Monthly. She later became assistant editor of the journal and, through her good offices, between 1878 and 1881 it published five illustrated articles by Redwood describing his wartime experiences. A further article was published by the journal's successor, Century Magazine, in 1886.2 Many of the pictures in these six articles, along with several new ones, appeared in Battles and Leaders in 1888. Redwood's close relationship with Sophie apparently ended about 1879, but his reputation as a Civil War artist continued to grow and he produced work on the subject for the remainder of his life. During the 1880s he was working in New York and by 1900 he had a studio at Bayonne in New Jersey.3 The events of his teenage years had made an indelible impression on him. In 1905 he wrote to his old commander, General Lomax, “…my memory of those brave days holds out, & the people who made them so are more real than those of today…”4
In 1911 Miller’s Photographic History published three further articles by Redwood each containing specific references to his service with the 55th Va. and in the same year the Journal of the Military Service Institution published one containing references to his service in the 1st Md. Cavalry Bn..5
Redwood spent the last decade or more of his life residing with four female cousins, the Strother sisters, at Port Conway in Virginia.6 He continued honing his skills as a writer and only a month before his death the Confederate Veteran published a well-constructed and well-written short story set during the Battle of Mine Run, entitled ‘A Thanksgiving Turkey’.7 He died while visiting his brother's home at Ashville, N.C., on December 24th 1922.8
Notes
1 U.S. 1870 population census for Ward 9. Baltimore, Md..
2 The full texts of the five Scribner's Monthly articles and the February 1886 Century Magazine article are available online at: http://www.unz.org/Author/RedwoodAllenC (all the articles are listed under Century Magazine, the title adopted by Scribner's Monthly after 1881). The articles can also be accessed at the online library of Cornell University.
3 U.S. 1900 population census for 2nd District, City of Bayonne, N.J..
4 The biographical information in this paragraph comes from an article on Redwood by Stephen Davis in Vol. 23, Issue 6 of Civil War Times Illustrated, pages 34 and 36.
5 The full text of Redwood's article, “The Confederate in the Field”, published in volume 8 of Miller's Photographic History is available on this website. His article for the Journal of the Military Service Institution appears in Vol. XLIX, 1911, pages 110-120.
6 U.S. population census for Rappahannock, King George Co., Va., 1910 and 1920.
7 Confederate Veteran, November 1922, Vol. XXX, pages 423-426.
8 Confederate Veteran, Vol. XXXI 1923, page 67
https://archive.org/stream/confederateveter31conf#page/66/mode/2up