The Schuylkill Arsenal photograph album is a 26.5 x 35 cm photograph album with a black leather cover. The album contains 12 unattributed 18 x 23 cm albumen prints, all of which depict various buildings and streets at Schuylkill Arsenal. Also present in many of the photos are various unidentified individuals, presumably most are Arsenal workers but there are also women and children. There may have been a 13th photograph within the album at one point, no longer extant; the back of each photograph is numbered sequentially in pencil, skipping number 8.
Nothing within the actual album gives a precise date for the photographs, but three of the photographs (3, 6, and 8) were in possession of a Richard P. Barr (the 1920 Census shows a 58 year old Richard P. Barr living in Philadelphia working as a "foreman" at the "arsenal") and were used in Frank H. Taylor's 1913 publicationPhiladelphia in the Civil War , which states that the photographs date from 1862. According to Taylor's publication, the eighth photograph in the album depicts "Old Bill" the white warhorse used by General George G. Meade. This has not been confirmed, and is certainly not Meade's famous horse Old Baldy.
The last page of the album has four items related to the Trout family of Philadelphia. The demise of Clinton J. Trout (died on December 14, 1909), his wife Mary E. Trout (died on March 1, 1907), and their son Warner F. W. Trout (died on September 21, 1909) is documented. The connection between the Trout family and the Schuylkill Arsenal is unknown.
