Working on adding some color to a few Texas Jack images.
This is Jack circa early 1873 when the Scouts of the Prairies played in New York City. Note the long ostrich feather in Jack's headband. He comped this style from General Jeb Stuart, his commanding officer during the Civil War, when Jack was a scout and spy for Company G of the Fifth Regiment Virginia Cavalry in the Army of Northern Virginia.
But by the time Jack reached New York, and the studio this image was taken in (likely Gurney & Son studios at 707 Broadway), he had spent a few years working for the Federal government, sometimes alongside men he had previously fought against on Virginia battlefields...men like Goerge Armstrong Custer and Phil Sheridan.
Its easy to see in an image like this why so many descriptions of Texas Jack mention him as a "magnificent specimen of physical manhood." Around this time, one New York newspaper went so far as to say that "there is not a young lady of romantic disposition who ever got a view of his face but will pronounce him a downright good-looking young fellow, and the best of it is that he is not yet a married man.”
