(CIVIL WAR NAVY) Archive of letters from Norfolk Navy Yard

Sale 2344 - Lot 96

Price Realized: $ 812

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Estimate: $ 400 - $ 600

"I FOUND A MAGNIFICENT YARD IN RUINS" (CIVIL WAR--NAVY.) Archive of letters from Norfolk Navy Yard shipbuilder Isaiah Hanscom and his family. 38 letters (almost all from the 1860s, most addressed to Joseph Frost from family members) and a Portsmouth, NH ship inventory dated 1841; various sizes, condition generally strong. Vp, 1841-1869

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Most of these letters are addressed to Joseph Frost (1791-1880) of Kittery, ME. Two of his daughters married naval constructors. Avoline married Edward Hart Delano, and Sarah married Isaiah Hanscom (1815-1880). While stationed at the Norfolk Navy Yard, Hanscom wrote to his father-in-law 15 times from 1863 to 1868. He described taking over the twice-burned works in his first letter of 23 November 1863: "I found a magnificent yard in ruins. . . . the appearance represents a heap of ruins. Soon after I came, the steamers began to come in for repairs and since that time I have had more work than I could get materials or workmen to do. We have 11 steamers at the yard undergoing repairs and more down at the fort waiting." In 1865, he was apparently asked to procure a freedman for his father-in-law, but reported "I have not been able to find you a contraband yet, and it is quite doubtful if I can as pretty much all the Negroes are either in the army or in government service" (22 March 1865).
Among the letters from daughter Avoline Delano is one dated at the Pacific Navy Yard on Mare Island, CA, 14 March 1855. She attended a ball in Sacramento with General John Wool, who she describes as "a very courteous bland old foggey in his manner, a little spiced with vanity." During the war she described a visit to a monitor at Norfolk: "We were invited on board of one of the ironclad gunboats, the Dictator, built by Ericcson at the cost of two millions of dollars. We found two hundred officers & men under the surface level of the water they floated in, amid the most complicated and ponderous machinery, which of course in its different parts I could not comprehend, all for the working of two great missiles of death" (29 December 1864). This collection offers a different perspective on the Union Navy, from a civilian family intimately involved in its construction. See also lot 97.