American Revolution Veterans photographed mid-1800s (eyes, find, world, percentage)

[maus]

I didn't find an existing thread for this, look at these photos of American Revolutionary vets from Time magazine in 2013. They had been all photographed as centenarians in the 1850s-1860s. Amazing find. Rev. E.B. Hillard had kindly published a book with the photos called The Last Men of the Revolution in 1864!

That would be interesting to me, if any of you posters may be a descendent of one of these older gents.

[daliowa]

Thanks for posting. Enjoyed looking at their photos & reading the short bios. I love history.

[Mr.Quiet]

They look like living bronzed statues staring back at you from across time. Those eyes actually stared down the British Regulars. Remarkable.

[hellpaso]

Amazing! Thank you so much for sharing. My ancestors did serve as soldiers in the Revolution. Alas--not one of the gentlemen pictured.

[Tobiashen]

Thank you! It always strikes me how much images of men like these/who lived "so long ago" look just like people today, excepting the fashion/style of the era. They could be anyone you see in the supermarket or in a doctor's office.

I watched a documentary on Medieval life in England the other day
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmcEHzcEEI4 and the Bishop of Rochester (a painting of him appears at 14:00) who attended King Henry VII's death lived in the 1460s, but his features are just like ours.

I don't know why it seems so incredible to me that people haven't changed that much; I think it's because (I, at least) tend to romanticize the past and with that comes a sort of "they couldn't possibly have been like we are" kind of mind set. But of course they laughed and drank and cried and suffered and fell in love and had friends just like we do. This is just one slice of history that intrigues me; the part that makes everything seem not so "historical" when you put it in context and contrast to "people today." The rate of evolution is exceedingly slow!

A life-size effigy of Henry VII was made after his death in 1509, and it still remains.

I don't mean to hijack the post! Got a little carried away with the fascinating faces of men from the Revolution, who do resonate with me because they lived on US soil and saw many of the same things we can still see today.

[maus]

I am glad to see you enjoy the post; the potos are truly remarkable.

Thanks, Tobiashen, for your links.

[Austin023]

There is one difference in how the people looked in the 18th century America as opposed today: eye color.
A results of a study on the modern history of eye color here in the United States were published a few years ago and it has been confirmed the percentage of the American population with blue eyes has been decreasing over the last century, with the rate of decrease accelerating in the last 30 years, while the percentage of those with brown eyes has increased.
Here is the link to a NY Times article on it:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/18/wo...9975.html?_r=0