Apr 13, 2023 - Sale 2633

Sale 2633 - Lot 63

Price Realized: $ 688
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 600 - $ 900
(CIVIL WAR--NEW YORK.) John K. Barager. Letters of an Allegany County corporal, including a map of the Battle of Deserted House. 22 Autograph Letters Signed to his wife Ann Diane Whitney Barager in Canaseraga, NY, plus 2 incomplete letters, and 3 related family letters from the same period, in one folder. Various places, 1862-1864
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Additional Details

John Knight Barager (1818-1864) was a farm laborer in Canaseraga, Allegany County, NY, with a wife and two young children. He served as a corporal in the 130th New York Infantry, which soon became the 1st New York Dragoons, a mounted infantry regiment also known as the 19th Cavalry.

His longest and most dramatic letter, dated 4 February 1863, describes the recent battle of Deserted House near Suffolk, VA: "I thought one time that we would have to retreat as them shells came so thick that it was a miracle that we escaped as well as we did. The shell, grape & canister came incesantly and came so close that we could feel the wind of them, and there we lay flat as we could of course for two hours, and then . . . made a charge on there battery, but they had left that posicion. . . . Mr. Hill and I was ordered to go near the road. We crept along expecting to see a Reb every moment. There was . . . shells comeing down through, cuting down trees a foot through and the pieces of shell and balls ware flying in every direction. We advanced up to the fence. There the Rebels rose up and we fired on them, and they on us . . . and we had to fall back. . . . Made another charge and I tell you we made them skedaddle the best they could. . . . I thought of you when in that awful fight. Just think how near you came being a widdow." On verso he has drawn an annotated map of the battle.

Barager's 13 April 1863 letter was written two days into the Siege of Suffolk: "We received notice that there was a large force of Rebels advancing here and they have come. They are in large force on three sides of us, and the fighting has comenced, but we think we can hold the place, but I think it will be a hard fight. Our regment has been out in rifle pits two nights already. . . . The Rebs are in sight, preparing for a hard fight, which they will have if they take this place, if I do live. . . . The cannons are booming in every direction. . . . This may be the last line you will ever get from me, but if so, do the best you can for yourself and children."

Barager wrote from Manassas Junction on 10 October 1863: "We are within three miles of Bull Run battle field. The boys have been there. They say there is plenty of human bones laying on top of the ground." Also of interest, in his 21 December 1862 letter he inserts a Magnus engraved card depicting generals Wool and Dix (included). His last letter is dated 28 January 1864. He died in May from wounds suffered at Old Church, Virginia.