Man in Civil War photo, long unidentified, finally gets his name back But scholars at the Library of Congress, which was given the photo last year, had no idea who he was. Like scores of forgotten Civil War portraits, his was listed as "unidentified." Until this week. Last Sunday, Karen Thatcher of Martinsburg, W.Va., opened a Washington Post Civil War history supplement. She spotted the picture in a Library of Congress advertisement, and realized: "That's Uncle Dave!" In an instant, for posterity, the soldier was given back his name - and his story. He was a teenager named David M. Thatcher, from Martinsburg, who enlisted in Company B, Berkeley Troop, First Virginia cavalry, and was killed in battle at age 19 outside Warrenton in 1863. He was buried in the cemetery at Martinsburg's Tuscarora Presbyterian Church after, family lore has it, his parents brought his body home with a horse and wagon. The identification has thrilled Karen Thatcher, a retired federal government worker, as well as the library and the collector, Tom Liljenquist, who purchased the picture several years ago and donated it in October. "We're just tickled to death," Thatcher said in a telephone interview on Wednesday. There's something very satisfying about this 19-year-old boy who died in 1863 who was [listed as] unidentified . . . that we're able to put a name to that face. Liljenquist, who has given the library almost 1,000 Civil War portraits in recent months, said: "I'm just awestruck. . . . This anonymous young boy has gotten his life back. The identification was made when Thatcher saw that the photo in the advertisement looked almost exactly like a larger image she had of David Thatcher, an ancestor of her husband, Larry. The larger image - which was likely copied from the photograph - is a "crayon enlargement," said Carol Johnson, the Library of Congress's curator of photographs. It was a common 19th-century technique in which a smaller picture was enlarged, printed and then colored in with charcoal or chalk to make a bigger portrait. "That way, people would have something they could hang on their walls," she said. Since he died in the war, they probably had this made . . . as a way to remember him. What happened to the original photograph is less clear. "Maybe he gave it to his girlfriend, before he left for the war," Johnson said. Eventually, someone came into possession of it and didn't know who he was, and it went onto the collectors market. Johnson said experts were able to glean some information about the soldier from his uniform type and accouterments - his Virginia belt buckle, and the crossed sabers and number 1 on his cap. But his name remained elusive. Liljenquist, of McLean, said he bought the picture years ago at a Civil War show, probably in Virginia. "It's a well-known photograph," he said. It's been published in a few books. But no name was associated with it. David Thatcher, it turns out, served in a storied unit that was originally commanded by the South's legendary cavalry general J.E.B. Stuart. David Thatcher was killed on Oct. 19, 1863, in the Battle of Buckland Mills, which was such a complete Confederate victory that the rebels called it "the Buckland Races." His tombstone reads: When thou goest out to battle against thine enemies, be not afraid of them, for the Lord thy God is with thee. Karen Thatcher said the Civil War still is "close" in her area and her family, with deep roots there, has long known of the story. "If you have a family member who dies at the age of 19 in the Civil War, everyone knows that," she said. And this picture was just always in the family. And so you just knew that that's who it was. "My husband jokingly calls him "Uncle Dave," " she said, although the soldier was three generations removed - technically a brother of her husband's great-grandfather. She said she and her husband have a small pre-war photograph of David Thatcher in civilian clothes attached to a certificate honoring his death. That, too, resembles the other images. She said their "crayon enlargement" was a copy of one that had been in her husband's household when he grew up and was passed down to one of his nieces. "It looks like a drawing of a photograph," she said. A history lover, Karen Thatcher said she opened the Post's Civil War section, and staring back was an identical copy of the picture that the niece had given them. Except, I could tell that it was a photograph . . . not a drawing of a photograph. "I thought, "Son of a gun." I thought, "Gee whiz." I thought, "Isn't this amazing?" " she said. She said she went to the library's online gallery, and "there's Uncle Dave." She called the Library of Congress on Monday morning. Johnson, the curator, said the "unidentified" designation would likely be removed from the gallery Friday and replaced with David Thatcher's name.