Man posed as corpse in photos

SALEM — Attorney and historian Tim Brookes of East Liverpool will discuss “Jacob Shenkel: Gettysburg Photo Mystery” at 7 p.m. Tuesday at the Salem Historical Society, 208 S. Broadway Ave.

Shenkel stayed behind to help the wounded after the Battle of Gettysburg during the Civil War and posed as a corpse for photographers.

In 1984, Brookes acquired several tintype photos of the veteran at a garage sale. He tracked down another descendant who had the 1863 diary kept by Shenkel, who was a private in the 62nd Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry.

Diary references allowed Brookes to make the connection to a series of photos long-thought to be faked scenes of dead soldiers. Shenkel’s face appears in several corpse images. He died at age 86 in 1927.