Title |
Wissler, Jacques (James) |
Alternate title |
Wissler, Jacob |
|
Weister, Jacob |
Date |
1806-November 26, 1887 |
Description |
Jacques Wissler, "lithographer of the Confederacy," born in Strasbourg, France, in June 1806, was a talented portrait painter
who began his career in lithography in Philadelphia working for P.S. Duval from 1849 to 1859. Formally educated until the
death of his father in 1815, Wissler entered the employ of premier French lithographer Godefroy Engelmann in 1821 after working
in a paper factory. Wissler relocated to Paris in 1825 and remained in the employ of Engelmann. By 1832 he accepted a job
as an artist in Guebwiller, Haut Rhin, France. The details of his career and life in France after this point are unknown.
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Wissler immigrated to the United States in 1849, where he settled in the Southwark neighborhood of Philadelphia with his family,
including his wife Anna Louise (1811-1874) and four children. By 1850 he worked as an artist and lithographer for P.S. Duval,
a fellow Frenchman. Philadelphia city directories indicate that he moved several times, living at various Fifteenth Street
locations. By July 1860 he had relocated to New York and partnered with lithographer William P. Dreser at 358 Pearl Street.
A year later, Wissler traveled south to Richmond for business, where, at the outbreak of Fort Sumter, his lithographing and
engraving services were commandeered by the Confederacy. He designed and produced paper money and bonds in the southern capital,
despite his Union sympathies. His son, Jacques (b. ca. 1841), was drafted into the Confederate army, and his son Charles served
as a commissioned officer in the Union army (b. ca. 1842).
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After the war, Wissler purchased and relocated to a farm in Macon, Mississippi, where his son Charles was killed in a raid
by the Klu Klux Klan. His family remained in Macon a few years, until settling at 245 Royden Street in Camden, New Jersey
where he resided until his death on November 26, 1887.
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Is part of |
Philadelphia on Stone Biographical Dictionary of Lithographers |
Call number |
Philadelphia on Stone Biographical Dictionary of Lithographers |
Bibliographic citation |
Census 1850, 1860, 1870, 1880 |
|
Appletons Encyclopedia 2001, http://www.famousamericans.net/jacqueswissler |
|
Groce & Wallace, 697 |
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Inter Ocean (Illinois), November 27, 1887 |
|
Library Company of Philadelphia research File |
|
Merrill, 296 |
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Philadelphia Inquirer, November 28, 1887 |
|
Looney, Jacques Wissler, Painter and Printmaker, Imprint (Spring 1982) |
|
The Bulletin of the Camden County Historical Society, March 1970 |
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Trenton Evening Times, December 1, 1887 |