Apr 13, 2023 - Sale 2633

Sale 2633 - Lot 65

Price Realized: $ 531
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 800 - $ 1,200
(CIVIL WAR--NEW YORK.) Letters by three soldiers from Dryden, NY, with more than the usual supply of pathos. 8 Autograph Letters Signed to various parties, 2 with original envelopes; moderate wear, some with partial separations at folds. With a typed carbon transcript of the condolence letter. Various places, 1864-1865
Set Alert for Similar Items

Additional Details

John Farmer (1839-1864) of Jordan in Onandaga County, NY served as a First Sergeant in the 12th New York Light Artillery. He wrote to "friends at home" on 19 May 1864, toward the end of the long-running Battle of Spotsylvania Court House: "Men can talk about there patriotism at home but let them come here & endure the privations & dangers of a year's campaigning and there patriotism will lower into there boots. The sights of dead & wounded I have seen I can't tell of, but it's awfull. . . . You would wonder how anybody came out of battle alive, but there is five times as many killed & wounded as they give an account of. I know several redgts that came out of camp with from 6 to 7 hundred & they now muster 90 or 100 at the outside. That is skimming the cream of the country purty fast. Many a noble young man in the bloom of life I seen lay & wounded mortally. I have written several letters to friends belonging to dieing men." In a postscript he notes: "Our battery was on pickett last night. I had command of two pieces off by myself. I could [hear] the Rebel band play. Good by noble friends, if I should die today."

Sergeant Farmer's day came a month later, when he was killed in a skirmish near Petersburg. His wife had died young shortly before the war, leaving his sister Lizzie as his next of kin. Corporal Henry D. Brower, who describes himself as "your brother's most intimate friend," writes to Lizzie: "A better soldier I never saw; one cooler or of a more determined courage in the face of danger. Of course he had his enemies, as will any officer that does his full duty toward the men under him, but I never saw an officer in his trying position that was more generally respected by the men. . . . He has given his life in one of the best, one of the holiest, one of the most sacred causes that men have ever fought or died for. I know that he felt, with me, that it was better even to die for this cause than never to have struck one blow for it, and live."

Also included are 5 letters by Moses Frank Deo or Deho of the 5th New York Heavy Artillery, 1864-1865. They are addressed to John Farmer of Dryden, NY, presumably Sergeant John's father. On 12 April 1864 Deo wrote "We have got down to Harper's Ferry at last. . . . I can see whare John Brown done his mischief. Last night a part of the bridge was carid off by the water." Finally, one letter is from Sergeant John H. Mandeville to his wife. He was in the 21st New York Cavalry, and was also from Dryden, NY. In the closing weeks of the war on 20 March 1865, he recounts a tragedy: "Perhaps you remember John Farquer, the man that came from Dryden with us in the stage last spring one year ago? Well, he was trying to open a shell to get the brass screw out of it. He had it between his legs [you might want to stop reading here] when it burst & blew off both his legs or nearly so & his left hand also was blown to fragments & the little finger of his right hand & the small bone of the same arm was broken, besides burning his face & eyes very bad. He lived but a few hours but seemed to be perfectly conscious." Appended is a long poem written by the regimental chaplain on the occasion, which is yet more poignant than Mandeville's account.