Andrew J. Russell

Andrew J. Russell (20 March 1829 in Walpole, New Hampshire – 22 September 1902 in Brooklyn, New York) was a 19th-century photographer of the American Civil War and the Union Pacific Railroad. Russell photographed construction of the Union Pacific (UP) in 1868 and 1869.

Andrew J. Russell was born 20 March 1829 in Walpole, New Hampshire, the son of Harriet (née Robinson) and Joseph Russell. He was raised in Nunda, New York. He took an early interest in painting and executed portraits and landscapes for family members and for local public figures.

During the first two years of the Civil War, Russell painted a diorama used to recruit soldiers for the Union Army. On 22 August 1862, he volunteered at Elmira, New York, mustering in the following month as Captain in Company F, 141st New York Volunteer Regiment. In February 1863, Russell took an interest in photography and paid civilian photographer Egbert Guy Fowx $300 to teach him the collodion wet-plate process. Fowx was a free-lance photographer who worked both for noted photographer Mathew Brady and for the War Department.

Russell took his first photographs with a camera that he borrowed from Fowx and Colonel Herman Haupt. Haupt used Russell's photographs to illustrate his reports. Haupt arranged to have Russell removed from his regiment on March 1, 1863, so that he could photograph for the United States Military Railroad and the Quartermaster Corps, until he mustered out in September 1865. Russelll was the only military officer to photograph for the War Department during the Civil War. He is perhaps best known for "Confederate dead Behind the Stone Wall" and another photograph stated before taken during the Battle of Chancellorsville on May 3, 1863.

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