?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 2,000 - $ 3,000
(CIVIL WAR--CONFEDERATE.) Reminiscences of Confederate soldier's wife Mary Drummond, with related family papers. Autograph Manuscript Signed, 13 pages, 9 x 5 1/2 inches, on unbound sheets; light staining to cover page, minor wear. With two typed transcripts, one prepared in 1910 from the 1868 manuscript, and the other prepared more recently. [Savannah, GA], circa 1868
Mary Ann Dixon (1838-1921) was born and raised in Savannah, GA, and in 1860 married Edward W. Drummond who had recently relocated to Savannah from Maine (see the preceding lot). He served in a Georgia regiment during the Civil War, including a stint in Union prison, and then died in a yellow fever epidemic in 1876, along with three of their four children.
Offered here is Mary's memoir of the Civil War from a Confederate wife's perspective. It was written at the request of her local Daughters of the Confederacy chapter. It begins with the call to arms, and her husband's service at besieged Fort Pulaski: "After the Harbor was blocked, a letter was of rare occurence, & oh the sad hours that were spent not knowing how soon the enemy might make an attack upon the fort." In Savannah, the residents would become excited when "occasionally a vesel would run the blockade & it would be hailed with delight. . . . We would make over odd dresses, turn them, add pieces to the skirts, and by trimming, make a new one." She describes the arrival of Union occupation troops in Savannah at length: "We were up very late the night before, burning letters and all papers of importance as we did not know what to expect. . . . My little 3-year-old son went to the window and exclaimed 'Oh Mamma, look at the soldiers.'" She offered a Union sentinel some coffee and breakfast, and he pledged to protect her home. This preserved her family's livestock, and a buggy which she was later able to sell for $175. She recounts the order for all families of officers to be sent across the lines; she was permitted to stay until her son recovered from an illness. On her departure, she was ordered not to bring with her any of her husband's clothing: "I said, 'That is very hard, my husband bought & paid for his clothing.' He laughed & said 'You are unfortunate in having a husband in the Rebel Army.'" She then went as a refugee to Augusta, GA, where she stayed as a guest of a family friend until her return to Savannah. At the end of the war, she returned to Savannah by a cotton steamer, sleeping in a tent on the deck: "We had to begin life over again, as everything was lost."
Parts of this memoir were published, along with her husband's war diary, in "A Confederate Yankee: The Journal of Edward William Drummond, a Confederate Soldier from Maine," edited by Roger S. Durham (Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press, 2004). Provenance: by descent to Mary Ann Drummond's great-granddaughter as described in the "Confederate Yankee" acknowledgements in 2004; thence into the trade.
WITH--"In Memoriam, Edward W. Drummond." Black-bordered memorial broadside, 20 x 13 1/2 inches, printed on silk; folds, backed with linen, minor wear slightly affecting text. An extended tribute to Mary's husband Edward W. Drummond and young children Ina, Edward and Mary, who all perished during a yellow fever outbreak in August-September 1876. None traced in OCLC.
Watercolor portrait (possibly a hand-colored photograph) of an unnamed infant girl, 9 x 7 1/2 inches, laid down on paper in a period oval gilt frame without glass, signed by Dillon of 1227 Pennsylvania Ave., Washington. Luke C. Dillon was a photographer active at that address from about 1878 to 1883.
Photograph album with 9 tintypes and 13 cartes-de-visite inserted, most identified in pencil, including Mary, her husband Edward, their children, and several members of the extended Drummond family of Maine; several of these are reproduced in "Confederate Yankee."
Loose photographs (46 cartes-de-visite and 12 tintypes of a similar or smaller size), most unidentified.
Autograph book bearing inscriptions from friends and family mostly in Maine and Georgia, plus a few pages of manuscript verse, about 30 manuscript pages, 1885-1902.
Letter from William E. Flynn to Edward W. Drummond proposing a business partnership, Savannah, GA, 1 September 1868.
Carbon typescript copy of the "Private Journal of E.W. Drummond" (the same one later published in 2004 and offered in the lot above).
