After the battle at Gettysburg, a burial detail came upon a dead Union soldier whose only identification was an ambrotype of three young children clapsed in his hand.
Word of these "children of the battlefield" spread; efforts to identify the father blossomed into a Union-wide campaign. Thousands of copies of the picture were circulated. A $50 prize was offered for the best poem about the incident, and the winning verse was set to music. Its refrain was a prayer: "O Father, guard the soldier's wife, and for his orphans care."
In November 1863 a woman whose soldier husband was listed as missing recognized the picture as one she had sent him before the battle. He was Sgt. Amos Humiston of Co. C, 154th New York Infantry.
The story was not quite over. Proceeds from the sales of the photograph and sheet music were used to establish the Soldier's Orphans Home in Gettysburg in 1866. Humiston's widow became the first matron, and his children were educated there.
"The Civil War, Gettysburg", Time - Life books, page 151
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