A Fine House with White Picket Fence, c. 1850

Josephine Cobb (1906-1986) occupied positions at the National Archives for thirty-six years as a cataloger, specialist in Civil War subjects, and later as Archivist-in-Charge of the Still Picture Branch. She was well known for her exhaustive research on Mathew Brady and Alexander Gardner, as well as on photographs of Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War. In 1952 she famously discovered the only known photograph of Lincoln at Gettysburg on the day of his Address, found upon extremely close inspection and study of a mislabeled glass plate negative. Over the course of decades, she was a devoted contributor to professional and academic associations and long a member of the distinguished Lincoln Group of the District of Columbia, where she served as President in 1970 and 1971.