Sep 27, 2018 - Sale 2486

Sale 2486 - Lot 258

Price Realized: $ 2,750
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 2,000 - $ 3,000
(CIVIL WAR--MAINE.) Horr, Calvin H. Letters of a deeply religious soldier during the closing months of the war. 25 Autograph Letters Signed to his mother Eleanor Flint Horr, sister Ruth F. Horr, and brother Amos F. Horr; condition generally strong; most with original stamped and postmarked envelopes, inserted into a binder with full typed transcriptions and research notes. Vp, October 1864 to May 1865
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Additional Details

Calvin Henry Horr (1840-1870) of North Waterford, ME was drafted into the 9th Maine Infantry in September 1864, and served as a private through the end of the war. His regiment saw fighting in the Richmond-Petersburg campaign, then went to North Carolina in February 1865 through the close of the war.
Private Horr's first taste of combat was at Fair Oaks on 27 October. He wrote "I am in the land of the living yet. . . . Ordered to ly flat on the ground, we would lie there untill the shot and shell come to near, then we would move to another place. Some of the time it would go very fast over us. It would make me curl to here them. There was 2 men wounded within a few feet of me when we were lying on the ground." Horr was disturbed by the heavy drinking he saw in the army (10 January 1865) but impressed by a prayer meeting held near camp by the Christian Commission (26 December 1864). Through January 1865, all of his letters were written from the same camp at Chaffin's Farm, VA, followed by 3 letters from Magnolia, NC. The last 5 letters were written during the occupation of Raleigh, NC in April and May. On 8 April he wrote "The report is that Richmond is ours, & that Gen. Lea has surenderd himself up." Horr's faith was on display in reaction to the assassination: "You will of corse here of Mr. Lincon's death before you receive this. The nation has met with a great los, but I think it is for the best, althow we cannot see it now." Provenance: from the collection of William Wheeler III. with--2 letters written to a Horr family member from relative Thomas Flint, 1865-66.