[prewarsports]

Photography gets tricky from that era because it was actually easier to make a photograph from a print than to mass produce a print in many ways.

If an artist makes an engraving or wood cut, there generally is only one way to reproduce it. If a photographer takes a photograph of the engraving, he now has a glass plate he can take back to his studio, send in the mail to a friend or business partner, and he can now make unlimited copies of the engraving. You see this often in the Civil War era and through the 1870's.

It is likely a mounted photograph of an engraving for the purposes of mass production. The mount and paper appear to be vintage to the 1860's or early 1870's.