Amos Humiston was killed in action

Killed in action

Killed in action is a casualty classification generally used by militaries to describe the deaths of their own forces at the hands of hostile forces. The United States Department of Defense, for example, says that those declared KIA need not have fired their weapons but have been killed due to...

 during the American 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...

 on the Gettysburg Battlefield, dying with his childrens' image that his wife had mailed to him months earlier. A local girl found the image, and Dr. J. Francis Bournes saw it at her father's tavern and subsequently promoted the image: "wounded, he had laid himself down to die. In his hands…was an ambrotype

Ambrotype

right|thumb|Many ambrotypes were made by unknown photographers, such as this American example of a small girl holding a flower, circa 1860. Because of their fragility ambrotypes were held in folding cases much like those used for [[daguerreotype]]s...

 containing the portraits of three small children… [It is] desired that all papers in the country will draw attention [so] the family…may come into possession of it" (The Philadelphia Inquirer

The Philadelphia Inquirer

The Philadelphia Inquirer is a morning daily newspaper that serves the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, metropolitan area of the United States. The newspaper was founded by John R. Walker and John Norvell in June 1829 as The Pennsylvania Inquirer and is the third-oldest surviving daily newspaper in the...

, October 19, 1863).
Humiston's wife in Portville, New York

Portville (town), New York

Portville is a town in Cattaraugus County, New York, United States. The population was 3,952 at the 2000 census. The name is derived by the town's early role in shipping lumber and other items down river....

--who hadn't received a letter from her husband since the Battle of Gettysburg

Battle of Gettysburg

The Battle of Gettysburg , was fought July 1–3, 1863, in and around the town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. The battle with the largest number of casualties in the American Civil War, it is often described as the war's turning point. Union Maj. Gen. George Gordon Meade's Army of the Potomac...

--responded to the photograph description in the American Presbyterian of October 29. She subsequently confirmed the image after Bourns sent her a carte de visite

Carte de visite

The carte de visite was a type of small photograph which was patented in Paris, France by photographer André Adolphe Eugène Disdéri in 1854, although first used by Louis Dodero...

 copy of the image. Bourns took the original to her; and the image identification, as well as Bourns' project for an orphans' home at Gettysburg, were publicized.

The family subsequently resided at the "National Homestead at Gettysburg" (opened October 1866) for 3 years until the widow remarried, when they relocated to Massachusetts.

Historiography

After numerous postbellum retellings and a 1993 memorial regarding the story at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania

Gettysburg, Pennsylvania

Gettysburg is a borough that is the county seat, part of the Gettysburg Battlefield, and the eponym for the 1863 Battle of Gettysburg. The town hosts visitors to the Gettysburg National Military Park and has 3 institutions of higher learning: Lutheran Theological Seminary, Gettysburg College, and...

;, Mark H. Dunkelman published Humiston's 1999 biography using Humiston's war letters--including a May 1863 poem of how Humiston missed his family.