Andrew Joseph Russell was a 19th-century American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 photographer of the Civil War

American Civil War

The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...

 and Union Pacific Railroad

Union Pacific Railroad

The Union Pacific Railroad , headquartered in Omaha, Nebraska, is the largest railroad network in the United States. James R. Young is president, CEO and Chairman....

. Russell was the official photographer of the eastern half of the first transcontinental railroad. His best known photograph shows the joining of the rails at Promontory Summit, Utah

Promontory, Utah

Promontory in Box Elder County, Utah, United States, is notable as the location of Promontory Summit where the United States' Transcontinental Railroad was officially completed on May 10, 1869....

on May 10, 1869.

Civil War

Andrew Joseph Russell was born in New Hampshire in 1829, though he was raised in New York City. Russell began his training as a painter before volunteering for the Union Army in the Civil War. There he was assigned to the United States Military Railroad Construction Corps, in part because of his family history in canal and railroad construction. In that role he photographed primarily transportation subjects for the Union, but was responsible for a few photographs of more historical and graphical interest sold to and distributed by the Mathew Brady Studios. One such was "Confederate dead Behind the Stone Wall" after the battle of Chancellorsville, May 1863. After the end of the Civil War, Russell was commissioned by the Union Pacific Railway Company to make pictures of every aspect of the construction of the eastern (Union Pacific constructed) portion of the transcontinental railroad. While he is perhaps most famous for his iconic image of the laying of the Golden Spike at Promontory Summit, Utah, his album-book, Sun Pictures of Rocky Mountain Scenery included often spectacular photographs of the technologies of railroad building laid across the wastelands of the American West.

External links

• Andrew J. Russell — 19th Century Photographer of the Union Pacific Railroad
• Photographs by Andrew J. Russell available for research use at the Minnesota Historical Society.