(CIVIL WAR NEW YORK) Memorial certificate for a Brooklyn fi

Sale 2391 - Lot 117

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(CIVIL WAR--NEW YORK.) Memorial certificate for a Brooklyn firefighter who was mortally wounded at Bull Run. Manuscript document, 23 x 18 inches; uneven toning including horizontal band across text, minimal dampstaining. Brooklyn, NY, 22 August 1861

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William Moir Smith (1839-1861) was a member of the Alert Hose Company No. 3 in Brooklyn's Western District. At the outset of the war, he went to the front as a lieutenant in the 71st Infantry Regiment of the New York National Guard. He was badly wounded at the first Battle of Bull Run, captured by the Confederates, and died at Libby Prison two weeks later. His fire company comrades drafted this resolution in his memory, describing his service and tendering "to his bereaved family our most sincere and warmest sympathies, tempered however with the consolation that he nobly did his duty unto the end." Smith's body was not returned north until the close of the war, four years later.