A Virginia history buff has launched a website to highlight the photography of Samuel Walter Gault, who captured some of the earliest known images of Bermuda.

Fred Taylor said he viewed the Tennessee native as the “grandfather of Bermuda photography”, capturing the island and its people before James Hayle and Nicholas Lusher made their mark, and created swgault.omeka.net to make Mr Gault’s work more accessible.

“He was in the right place at the right time and he was doing something which at that point was cutting-edge,” Mr Taylor said.

“He provides us with the earliest images of what Hamilton looked like or St George’s looked like in the 1860s.”

Mr Taylor, who has written for historical journals including Military Images and Civil War Navy Magazine, said he first encountered a photograph by Mr Gault as part of his research into Thomas Mann Thompson, a blockade runner in the Civil War.

“I thought it was curious that the photograph was taken in Bermuda. I put that away in the footnotes in the back of my head,” Mr Taylor said.

“At the time I knew a little about Bermuda’s condition during the Civil War and that it had a relationship with the United States for centuries, but I didn’t really think much about it.”

He said that changed when another photograph by Mr Gault turned up in his Civil War research — a picture taken of Commander Arthur Sinclair II, the captain of the Mary Celeste.

“It was at that point I was thinking that there had to be more to this story,” he said. “We have a photographer who has taken all of these images of these historical figures.”

With the assistance of the Bermuda Historical Society, the St George’s Historical Society and the Bermuda Archives, Mr Taylor found an array of photographs taken by Mr Gault, featuring British military officers, Bermuda landmarks, ordinary citizens and even a blockade runner’s dog named Tinker.

“One of the things we know is he comes to Bermuda in 1861, but he dies at a young age in 1865,” he said. “There’s this short window, but that window tells so many stories.”

Mr Taylor said that Mr Gault had intended to stay in Bermuda for only a few weeks, but remained on the island because he fell in love.

“It’s like a made-for-TV movie, almost,” he said. “He meets someone on Front Street and they fall in love, and a few months later they are married.”

Mr Taylor said he felt compelled to tell the story and share Mr Gault’s work, and came up with the website as a means to make sure the information is accessible for anyone who is interested in the history of photography, Bermuda or the Civil War.