I have a mint Civil War Canteen and it has a faint name wrote in red on it. I have made out the following:
Capt.
D.T. Du_ _ _ l or i & o or a.
I have tried everything but these are all the letters I can pull out of the digital photos using MS Picture it 99 and Amazing Photo Editor. I can't load the picture here because it's too large. Could someone verse enough and with the software made for this help me out on this problem ?
Please email me and I will send you the pictures. Thanks in advance :thumbsup:
wjsteppe@bellsouth.net

This problem might be solved through a genealogical society. Did this person serve on the North or South? Do you know from which state the person might have been?

dc

Until I can make out the spelling of the last name I can't look him up. Once I have the name then I can located his war records.
Thanks

Do you know what side he was on or any other info like that?

Not positive but could have been Union since the canteen came out of Penn.

If you have the canteen, examine the name with different colors of light. If you can make it out better doing that, then photograph it under that color of light, then change it to black and white in Photoshop.

Stargate,

thanks for taking the time to send me the images.
I took my best crack at what you sent me and, after playing with colors and filters, I came up with this. It showed the most promise since it had the most contrast.

Before trying to make up what the letters were, I looked for public documents, letters and other manuscripts written during the period. This was so I would have a point of reference of what certain characters looked like during the 1860's. These are the documents that I found helpful:

http://www.pvhistorian.com/exhibitcpage2.jpg
http://www.performance-vision.com/gen-richardson/jan10ltr-p1-hires.JPG
http://new.vmi.edu/archives/Manuscripts/00374/0037405.jpg
http://www.lib.iup.edu/depts/speccol/Civil%20War%20Letters%20Website/april%2025%20back.jpg


Possibility number one:
My interpretation (off course open for debate...) is: DUYEC?IA
I can't make out the 6th character

Possibility number two:
These are 2 words: DUYE and C?IA

1- there was a Duye family out of New York state during the time of the Civil War.
2 - C?IA a military abbreviation of some kind

Finally, if you approve, I'll make the images that you sent me available to the members of the forum via my website.

[EDIT]

Stargate, graciously allowed me to make the images available to the members:

http://www.franklopes.com/public_images/Name_on_Canteen.jpg
http://www.franklopes.com/public_images/Canteen-2.jpg
http://www.franklopes.com/public_images/Canteen-1.JPG
http://www.franklopes.com/public_images/number8.jpg
http://www.franklopes.com/public_images/number4.jpg
http://www.franklopes.com/public_images/number3.jpg
http://www.franklopes.com/public_images/number2.jpg


Let the debate begin :-)

I don't think they would be tied together..A lot of men would put their name alone with the regiment and Company they were in on their equipment, ie:
Capt.
D.T. Duye
9th NY Inf. Co. a ........... or just Co. a

Do we possible have D.T. Duye co a
Mean while I'll be checking the records for a Capt. Duye from N.Y. maybe he was in company a ??

Looks to me like it could be F Quetori or Quetoria or even Quetoril

Thanks Cass I'll try that name.....odd name I can't even pronounce it, but who knows it may be what were looking for. I would like to thank everboby on the forum for their help. :bigthmb:
Thanks

Some time back we had a challenge to see if we could extract a name from documents. The name had deteriorated badly and was in much worse condition than your canteen. I'm posting the link to the challenge. I hope some of the answers/techniques are able to help you.

http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/challenges/9501-forensic-challenge-2-a.html

Janet

there was a better link something about a missing address, totally scrubbed from recall, but cannot find it unfortuntely

The name Duncan ? or does anybody see anything else ? I'm just throwing out what I think I see.........

Only D. Duncan shown as Captain on both sides