(CIVIL WAR--NEW YORK.) James Fisk. Letter by an Orleans County artilleryman--delivered long after his death, sixty years later. Autograph Letter Signed to his parents Luke and Eliza Fisk of Shelby Center, NY. 4 pages, 8 x 5 inches, on one folding sheet; folds, minimal soiling. With original stamped envelope with Baltimore postmark, annotated on verso "Rec'd at Medina, NY PO Oct. 16th 1924, with end cut open" and with ink stamp of postmaster Philip I. Brust; also with 2 period newspaper clippings from 1924, plus 7 letters from strangers to Sarah Smith dated 1924; plus typed transcript of the original letter. Fort McHenry, MD, 13 March 1864
James Fisk (1836-1865) was raised in England and came to Orleans County in western New York with his parents in the early 1850s. In 1862 he enlisted in the 8th New York Artillery, and two years later wrote this perfectly normal charming letter home from camp in Maryland. "I had a letter from Fred, and . . . he sed that he had been on a rade after old Mosbey, but they did not find him. He is a slipery old dog. . . . He causes more truble then any of the rest. . . . I like soldiren first rate, beter than ever, for we are just giting uset to it." Fisk was captured a few months later, spent several months in Libby Prison which broke his health, and died back home in Shelby on 30 March 1865 just two weeks after his parole.
The letter was held up by military censors, where it was misfiled and forgotten. In 1924, it was finally forwarded to the post office in Medina, NY just north of Shelby, and then delivered to Fisk's 84-year-old sister Sarah Smith, who still resided in Shelby. This sixty-year delay came to the attention of a newspaper reporter, and as these quirky stories sometimes do, went viral across the nation. Mrs. Smith received several requests from postal history collectors asking for the envelope (most of them assuring her that it was of very little value). We suspect the envelope will be of interest to both philatelic and Civil War collectors.
