Jun 12, 2025 - Sale 2708

Sale 2708 - Lot 62

Unsold
Estimate: $ 1,000 - $ 1,500
(CIVIL WAR--CONNECTICUT.) Final letter to the doomed Private Edmund E. Doane, with Brown & Alexander embalmer's pass and receipt. 3 items, various sizes; minor wear. Various places, May-November 1864
Set Alert for Similar Items

Additional Details

Edmund Edgar Doane (1840-1864) of Saybrook, CT was serving as a private in the 7th Connecticut Infantry when he narrowly escaped death or capture at the Battle of Drewry's Bluff on 16 May 1864. This lot includes:

A letter sent to Private Doane by his sister Nancy, 29 May [1864], from Winthrop, CT (with typed transcript). She discusses his substantial bank balance accrued during the war: "We think it nessasary that, should you be killed, which may be the case, altho you have narrowly escaped once, that you should have your choice and write how you wish it disposed of." Referring to his account of Drewry's Bluff (not present), she writes "If you can be as lucky in evry time of danger as you was when you escaped on the 16th, I shall look for your preservation & expect you home in Sept. . . . It made us shudder to read your letter, and yet it was quite amusing to read the stretege you used to escape. Capt. Denison was in tonight. He seem to think you was placed in a tight place & it looks cruel that a few should be kept back as a target for the Rebels when the regt must have known they would be sacrificed. . . . What did that old woman do without her cape?"

Before that letter arrived at the front, Private Doane's luck ran out, and he died at the Battle of Bermuda Hundred on 31 May 1864. In November, his family paid to have the body sent back to Connecticut. Included in this lot is a provost marshal's pass dated Bermuda Hundred, VA, 13 November 1864, for the undertaker "Chas. B. Stannard & body" bound for Washington.

Two days later, we have a receipt on the full-page letterhead of the Bermuda Hundred agent of "Dr. Brown & Alexander, Embalmers of the Dead." It reads "Received of Chas. B. Stannard for exhuming, disinfecting the remains of Edwin E. Doane and one patent deoderizing burial case, seventy-five dollars." It is signed by Charles W. Thayer, embalming surgeon on behalf of Drs. Brown & Alexander, as "agent to armies operating against Richmond."

The firm of Drs. Brown & Alexander later had a moment of fame as the embalmers of Abraham Lincoln. See lot 127 for their business card.