Cassilly Adams Art

Cassilly Adams was born in Zanesville, Ohio, and was a descendant of the American founding father, John Adams. He studied at the Boston Academy of Arts with Thomas Noble and later at the Cincinnati Art School. During the Civil War, he was in the army and was wounded at the Battle of Vicksburg. In the 1870s, he moved to St. Louis, where he worked for an engraver and did fine art painting, including Custer's Last Fight, which took one year to paint and which the St. Louis Art Club exhibited around the country, charging admission. For models, Adams posed Sioux Indians in actual dress and cavalrymen in uniforms. In 1895, the brewery gave the painting to the 7th Cavalry, and it was destroyed in a fire at Fort Bliss, Texas, in 1946. Adams died in 1921 at Trader's Point near Indianapolis, Indiana.