?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 500 - $ 750
(CIVIL WAR--NEW YORK.) Nicholas Ecker. Long run of letters by a 44-year-old private from Montgomery County. 28 Autograph Letters Signed to his daughter Catherine M. Ecker of St. Johnsville, NY.; condition mostly strong, most with original postmarked envelopes. Various places, 1863-1865
Nicholas Ecker or Eacker (1819-1905) was a farmer from St. Johnsville in Montgomery County, NY who descended from the hard-pressed Palatine German settlers of the Mohawk Valley. He enlisted as an older soldier in the 153rd New York Infantry in August 1862. He was apparently only semi-literate; his 13 August 1863 letter notes: "The name of the person who writes my letters, his name is Martin V.B. Ashley, a sergeant in our company." Several letters were written while stationed as a guard at Forest Hall Prison in Georgetown, DC. On 10 September 1863 he wrote: "Night before last there was about 240 prisoners brought here, so we have about 400 of them here now." On 6 October 1863 he visited the Patent Office and saw military relics of George Washington and Andrew Jackson. On 21 December 1863 he planned to visit Congress in session: "I like to hear these great men talk what they are a going to do. I was their last week and I enjoyed it very much." His 13 January [1864?] letter discusses "rebel prisenors": "Thier is a great many of them here yet. They keep a comeing in every day and when the prison gets full they send them to Point Lookout, and keep them thier untill they get exchanged or die."
Two letters were written in early 1864 when the regiment was in Louisiana on the Red River Campaign. On 26 June, while camped in Morganzia on the banks of the Mississippi, "one of the boys . . . was drowned last night while in swimming. They tried to get him out but the current was so swift that they could not, and they have not found him yet." They returned north in July 1864, and Ecker was wounded at the Third Battle of Winchester, 19 September 1864. An undated note from a comrade testified (probably for a disability claim): "Nicholas Ecker was wounded in the neck by what was supposed to be a piece of the lock of a gun at the Battle of Winchester." On 11 October he assures his daughter it is only "a small flesh wound . . . it was a terrible battle and our boys fought nobly, driving the Rebels from every position they occupied." After the end of hostilities, the regiment remained for the occupation of Georgia. Ecker was in Savannah for Independence Day and reported that "the niggars had a parade through the streets."
After the war, Ecker was a farmer at Hannibal, further north in New York.
