Oct 02, 2012 - Sale 2287

Sale 2287 - Lot 182

Price Realized: $ 660
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 300 - $ 400
(CIVIL WAR--ILLINOIS.) Plummer, Roswell F. Letter from a soldier in the 92nd Illinois facing guerrillas in Kentucky, and related family letters by Roswell and brother Pardon addressed from rural Plum Creek, IL. 9 Autograph Letters Signed total; various sizes and conditions. Plum Creek, IL and Nicholasville, KY, 1862
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Brothers Roswell F. Plummer and Pardon D. Plummer settled in rugged Jo Daviess County in northwestern Illinois shortly before the war. They wrote eight letters to their brother Lyman J. "Jim" Plummer of New York before their enlistment in the 92nd Illinois Infantry. The colorful letters are full of frontier stories and war talk. Pardon discusses resistance to the draft on 5 May: "There is a good many going to war, big and little. They threatened of hanging two or three men . . . if they had stoped their nois."
Roswell writes one letter from the front, on an attractive piece of patriotic stationery, dated 22 November 1862. Tramping through the rain in Kentucky, his regiment was constantly harassed by rebel sympathizers, and he reports that about 80 of their invalids were taken prisoner from the regimental hospital in Mount Sterling. He adds: "The country is all Sesh around there. They threatened of cleaning us out while there, but we were ready for them every time. The town of Winchester talked of atacking us but they kept quiet, for we drew up in front of the town, fixed bayonets & loaded, marched through unmolested. The 92 is an eye sore to Ky." Roswell and Pardon both died in a hospital in Danville, KY in 1863. For other letters to Jim Plummer, see lots 187 and 252.