Civil War Photo Sleuth (CWPS), a website that allows users to add, find, and identify photos of soldiers, sailors, and civilians from the American Civil War era, supports historians, archivists, genealogists, collectors, dealers, and other researchers. CWPS includes 50,000 images, the largest digitized archive of Civil War-era soldier and civilian portraits, and uses AI-based facial recognition and advanced user interfaces. Founder Kurt Luther, an associate professor of computer science and (by courtesy) history at Virginia Tech, talks about his journey as a collector, a data scientist, and the driving force behind CWPS.