Using facial recognition software to identify Civil War Soldiers

[Steve]

(11-20-2018 11:39 PM)Christine Wrote:  

(11-20-2018 07:30 AM)RJNorton Wrote:  Christine, I know of the enormous amount of research you have done on Frederick A. Aiken. Do you know if the photo of him on Find-A-Grave is authentic?

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/39589509

I have no idea! I have never seen that. I wonder where he found that picture.

This is the image used on Aiken's Find A Grave page:



The earliest instance of the photograph I could find online was on a website called Spared & Shared 2, that provides images and transcripts of old letters for historians and genealogists:

https://sparedandshared2.wordpress.com/

The photo of the man identified as Aiken comes from this page transcribing a 08 June 1840 letter from Caleb Frederick Cope to Pennsylvania State Senator Samuel M. Barclay:

https://sparedandshared2.wordpress.com/l...m-barclay/

The photo is unidentified but is used as an example of what Cope "might have looked like". I'm not sure why the author did that. The photograph was published on the site in August 2012.

There's a painting of Cope on his own Find A Grave page:

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/1458...erick-cope

From the Find A Grave images file size and upload date it seems that it was copied from this online encyclopedia called Alchetron, founded in 2014:

https://alchetron.com/Frederick-Aiken#-

I don't know if Alchetron and Spared & Shared copied the image from a website that no longer exists or if Alchetron just copied from S & S and made up that it was Aiken.

Here's a copy of Caleb Cope's obituary from page 4 of the 13 May 1888 edition of the Philadelphia Times. This is followed by an engraving of Cope.