Nov 21, 2024 - Sale 2687

Sale 2687 - Lot 91

Price Realized: $ 2,000
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 600 - $ 900
(CIVIL WAR--MASSACHUSETTS.) [Seth Alonzo Ranlett.] Volume of transcribed letters by a lieutenant in the 36th Massachusetts. [132] manuscript pages, plus 7 manuscript diary pages laid in. 4to, ½ calf minimal wear. Various places, 4 September 1862 to 13 October 1863 (transcribed circa 1900?)
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Seth Alonzo Ranlett (1840-1905) was a clerk in Charleston, MA before the war, son of a sea captain. He enlisted as a private in the 36th Massachusetts Infantry in July 1862, was a sergeant before reaching the front, and was promoted to Lieutenant and Adjutant in December 1862; he was discharged due to poor health in early 1864.

These letters were written to his wife Ellen "Nellie" Pierce Ranlett (1842-1914). They are long and articulate, covering the regiment's service at Fredericksburg, the Siege of Vicksburg, and more. The letter written 11 December with a 14 December postscript describes Fredericksburg at length: "Our Co. lays just in front of the residence of the mayor of Fredericksburg, and our boys have been ransacking it. Such a wreck of a house you never saw . . . torn all to pieces with shot and shell. . . . About sunset of the 12th the rebs got range of us, & opened on us with shells & canister & for a long time the balls flew over our heads pretty lively, killing & wounding some in our rear. . . . One piece of shell & a ball of glass (calculated to explode when it strikes one) fell close by my side & splattered up the mud a little."

A 5-month gap in the correspondence after 8 January 1863 is explained with a note describing his hospitalization with typhoid fever.

Laid in is a transcription of a terse diary extending from 10 June to 19 November 1863 in 7 pages, with considerably less description than the letters.

The letters are signed only as "A," but are said by provenance to be authored by Ranlett. They are consistent with the outlines of his career; he begins the first letter by describing himself as an orderly sergeant, and on 17 December he describes his promotion to 1st Lieutenant and Adjutant. We do not know when or why they were transcribed, but the blank volume was acquired from Hooper & Lewis of 120-122 State Street, who left that address in 1879.